Susanna Fournier is Spending a Season in Hell with take rimbaud

About This Episode:

Playwright, director, and theatre maker Susanna Fournier joins Phil Rickaby fresh from rehearsal to talk about take rimbaud, her ambitious new production at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in association with the Howland Company. Inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s iconic prose poem A Season in Hell, the play is a decade-plus labour of love that explores what it means to be a young artist crashing into the hard realities of the industry — and what happens when you refuse to take the path of least resistance.

Susanna and Phil dig into the state of Canadian theatre with refreshing candour: the fear of artistic risk, the pressure to program safe and familiar work, and what it costs artists, emotionally, financially, and creatively, to keep showing up.

From graduating the National Theatre School and navigating the post-theatre-school identity crisis, to collaborating with director ted witzel and the Howland Company across twelve years of drafts, workshops, and rewrites, Susanna reflects on what it means to grow up inside a play; and what it takes to finally let it become what it needs to be.

This episode explores:

• What take rimbaud is, and why Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell still feels urgently relatable to artists today
• The culture of artistic risk-aversion in Canadian theatre and why safe programming may be slowly destroying the art form
• Why theatre may actually become more essential, not less, in a world where AI is replacing on-screen performers
• The millennial anxiety baked into the play, and what twelve years of drafts taught Susanna about herself as an artist
• And much more!

Guest: ✍️ Susanna Fournier

Susanna Fournier is an award-winning Canadian playwright, theatre maker/director, and educator. Her play texts include: The Empire Trilogy (The Philosopher’s Wife, The Scavenger’s Daughter, Four Sisters), take rimbaud, PYPER, Next Time I Die, HEART/BODY, Always Still the Dawn, and antigone lives*. Her work centres on form-as-meaning and holistic dramaturgies. As an educator, she is the Artistic Director at Armstrong Acting Studios where she shapes performance pedagogy for beginner to master-level actors. She’s taught and lectured at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Creative School, Etobicoke School of the Arts, Randolph College, and Cawthra Park Secondary School.

Connect with Susanna Fournier:

🌐 Website: http://www.susannafournier.com

📸 Instagram: @_susanna_f

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

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.

Thank you to my Patrons: Chris, Georgia, Heather J, Tanisha, Aisling, Cassie, Heather, Jeanette, Steve

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 in Canadian theatre, from actors to directors to playwrights to producers.

If they’re making theatre in Canada, I’m talking to them. Some of the people I talk to are household names, and the rest are people that I really think you should get to know. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure that you like this episode and leave a comment so I know you were here and tell me what you liked about this episode.

And if you like Stageworthy in general, make sure that you are subscribed. Make sure that you hit that subscribe button and click the bell icon so that whenever a new episode comes out, you will get notified that a new episode is available. If you’re listening to the audio-only version, please make sure you’re subscribed.

Go to your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy and hit the follow button. And if you are already following, especially if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure that you leave a rating and review because your ratings and reviews will help new people to find this show. If you want to help me to make this podcast, please go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. I can’t make this show without my backers. And if you want to be one of them, if you want to, if you want to be one of those people who helps me to make this show, please become a patron. I will talk a little bit more about being a patron at the end of the show right before I tell you about who my guest is next week.

But this week, my guest is Susanna Fournier. Susanna is an award-winning playwright, theatre maker, director. Her latest play take rimbaud is on now at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

It runs until May 23rd at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I really enjoyed this one and you get to hear it starting now because here’s my conversation with Susanna Fournier. Susanna Fournier, thank you so much for joining me.

As you just said, we’re racing from rehearsal to get here in time for this interview. You’re in rehearsal for take rimbaud. Am I pronouncing that right?

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah, take rimbaud. That’s what we’ve been saying.

[Phil Rickaby]
At Buddies in Bad Times in association with the Howland Company. What is take rimbaud?

[Susanna Fournier]
I mean, I feel like that’s a question we’re asking ourselves in rehearsal almost every day. But the fun of take rimbaud is it is a piece that is inspired from Arthur Rimbaud’s kind of iconic prose poem, A Season in Hell, which is like half seedbird dream, half like diatribe, a bit of a howl. It’s this strange piece of writing that really changed the face of French poetry and French literature and enigmatic.

I first found it in 2014 and I just saw the title and I was like, well, I relate to that, like A Season in Hell. And the poem tells the story of this young poet who arrives to this banquet of life and then wants to have a revolution, a poetic revolution, and then meets kind of a demon and descends into darkness and madness and debauchery and ends up railing against Europe and history. And you go on this sort of fast, feral journey through language and pop out at the other side.

And Rimbaud has like quit poetry and renounced his art. And that was his sort of swan song. And so when I picked up the text, I was like, who is this person?

Like he wrote this at 19. He quit poetry by like 21. And yet Rimbaud has become this icon for like punk rock, Patti Smith, a lot of iconoclast artists.

And so I was like, I relate hugely to the story of like a young artist coming to the scene being like, let’s kick it up a notch and then hitting the reality of the art industry and money and rent and growing up and all these things. So I just couldn’t believe how relatable the poem felt to my own experience of graduating theatre school and coming to Toronto and wanting to, you know, fuck shit up. And then and kind of encountering that first series of potential like heartbreak or disillusionment or disenchantment that we can have as young artists when we realize like how hard it is.

And. Yeah, stop.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, I mean, I think I think the idea of being a young artist that just wants to fuck some shit up is I think something. I think in some theatre schools that gets kind of wrung out of you, it’s hard to hold on to because it can be so rigid what they’re preparing you for, especially when I went to theatre school, I’m an old man, so it was very regimented about like your career is going to be we’re preparing you to go to Stratford or Shaw. You’ll audition there.

That’s going to be your career. And you don’t fuck shit up when that’s your goal. But.

You kind of had we learned very quickly out of theatre school, the very few of us were going to do that and the rest of us had to figure out how to fuck shit up.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. And invent, you know, I just gave a talk at TMU to a bunch of graduating students and I was like, you’re going to have to invent your career and you’re going to have to keep discovering who you are because. Creative people are creative in many ways, and I myself went through an acting program, but even inside of that was like, oh, why is the scene this way?

And should we stage it this way? Like I was one of those annoying actors that was sort of questioning the story, the text, the writing, the staging, and eventually ended up, you know, now primarily I work on the other side. I’m the writer, I’m the director, I’m the creative producer.

And so a part of us, what I wanted to do a theatricalization of Take Rimbaud was also like, can we as theatre artists use some of the same techniques Rimbaud used as a poet to disrupt how we understand theatre as a form or that rigidity you speak of? Like, can we blow open a play like the same way he blew open verses and structure? And so that became an instruction for me is like, how do I use this sense of disruption or, you know, how do we fuck shit up as a play is actually happening?

So when we say like, what is Take Rimbaud? We’re constantly like trying to see if we can do this experiment of like, can we put a form of theatre on stage and then like mutate it or blow it up or break the play?

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, it is so hard to do that. Again, it comes back to like fucking shit up in the industry when I think a lot of times people feel like they can’t, right? Like, get somebody who’s about to criticize a theatre company or like critique something.

And the first thing they do is they do that shoulder check to see who might be around because you gotta, you gotta do, people are afraid of saying the wrong thing. There’s a politeness, but almost a fearful politeness sometimes in the industry of trying to keep things, you know, those companies are powerful and if I piss them off, I’m not going to work with them again. And they don’t, I think the perception is that a lot of theatre companies don’t sit well with discomfort.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. And I think, you know, I, this is something we, the play actually speaks directly to is like, what has happened to the idea of artistic risk in this country, in this moment? Like, I think everyone becomes so afraid that like, oh my gosh, we’re not going to sell tickets.

We got to do something familiar and comforting and, or feel good. Or we’re coming out of a pandemic, like people need happy stories. And yet, and yet what does that mean for advancing the art form or like defining what it means to make an art about right now?

And also people have become, I think, so afraid to, to say or do the wrong thing because everyone has a phone, everyone’s, you know, sort of kind of quietly surveilling each other. You don’t want to end up a mean, you don’t want to end up canceled, you don’t want to say the wrong thing. And so I think we’ve culturally and socially gone towards like, I’ll just do what I know.

And I’ll just do what everyone else is doing. But that makes for really boring experiences at the theatre. Because it’s like, we’re like, oh, I’ve seen a play that I’ve seen already a thousand times.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. I remember, you know, during the pandemic, you know, in the summer of 2020, when all the theatres were putting up their black squares and talking about how they’re going to fundamentally change the way they do everything.

And then a certain number of them, when they announced their first seasons back and things started to go back to normal, it was basically, well, we don’t need that anymore because that, that’s over. We could stop dealing with that. And they just sort of ignored the fact that they said they were going to change things.

You know?

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. This change is like, as you said, like change involves like a lot of discomfort and it involves a lot of like, I don’t maybe know yet. Like we’re confronting this all the time in rehearsal.

Like we did our first week of rehearsal and I, of course, like silly me was like, this draft’s pretty good. Like, I feel pretty solid about this. And at the end of the first week I was like, oh, I need to rewrite like this whole section because now we’re getting it on its feet.

And, and so we built these economic rehearsal processes that are like, okay, you got two weeks to rehearse the texts, you know, you slam it into tech for a week and boom. And that works if you’re doing a certain kind of piece. But if you’re actually experimenting in the room, if you’re trying something, you need to have that room for, oh, that didn’t work.

Okay, cool. We, we really committed to that choice. We tried it, we rehearsed it, and it actually doesn’t work at all.

And now we need the new thing. And so that takes time and it takes courage and it takes everyone, whether it’s the theatre company or the artists, being willing to sit in that place of like, I don’t know yet.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Susanna Fournier]
And not comfortable.

[Phil Rickaby]
Oh, 100%. I remember I had a good friend of mine, Richard Bone, great director has a habit of, of, of, you know, you’ll ask a question about the play when you’re sitting down, he’s like, I don’t know yet. And as actors, you’re always like, well, you’re the director, you’re supposed to know all the things.

And, and what he was trying to get us to do was like, just give into the fact that we were going to discover it on our feet and in the room and like, figure this stuff out. And it was just, it was uncomfortable to sit with not knowing until we figured it out. Yeah.

And then you, then you get to the point where you’re like, I understand now I trust this process, but so much resistance to the, to the director saying, I don’t know yet when we were getting started.

[Susanna Fournier]
Well, I love that you bring like trust into it also, because we, we were talking about this like a lot this week because the, like the text now is, is I’m starting to understand it more. ted is understanding it a bit more. And now the actors are, are kind of, we’re shifting that discomfort of like, okay, we kind of know what it is now.

And now letting the actors also be in that vulnerable place of, oh, I’d have to get vulnerable. Like now I have to just have stakes, want things that are uncomfortable to want, be willing to show a character desperately wanting something. And no one wants to be witnessed being like desperately in pursuit of something they want.

So we, you know, we’re chasing around a lot. Like, when is the writing hiding from being vulnerable? Okay.

That’s on me. Like, when is the production hiding, you know? And, and so we’re like, kind of like, how do you build up that sense of like, okay, now I just have to be vulnerable.

And, and, and that’s actually how I figure it out. And that’s how we get to that place of knowing is by risking not knowing.

[Phil Rickaby]
Vulnerability is so difficult. And it’s the thing that we’re, that as artists, we’re supposed to, we’re supposed to be. And yet it’s so, again, uncomfortable to do it, to like walk into a room and, and metaphorically take your clothes off, or depending on the show, sometimes really take your clothes off.

But like, it’s the kind of thing where you’re just trying to figure out, like, you know, you have to wear your heart on your sleeve and just be in a world where that’s not something that we do outside of the rehearsal hall.

[Susanna Fournier]
No, no. And I think Hugh, with this play, like, it’s about artists. It’s about that dream, that thing that made us fall in love with art.

It’s about wanting to be creative and wanting your art to come out into the world. And the pain of like, when you can’t get that production, or when you’ve been working on that draft, or when you have writer’s block. And so it’s very close to home for all of us in the room.

And it’s asking us to bear a part of ourselves in the production, that you’re like, Oh, but only my friends see that or only I see that or only, you know, like, it’s heartbreaking when you desperately want a part and you don’t even get an audition or you do get an audition. And, you know, like, it’s heartbreaking when you just, you know, the reality of the stakes that artists have, or talk about, you know, Oh, we don’t talk about it much at all.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, no.

[Susanna Fournier]
Because it’s like, not cool. It’s like, you know, but it’s a lot of people’s like, no, this is who I am. This is what I do in the world.

Like, this is why I exist. So the stakes are actually quite high.

[Phil Rickaby]
The stakes are so high. And it’s like, yes, this is the thing I’m passionate about, but you’re trying to be too cool about not caring about it. But like, what you really want to do is like, scream about the writer’s block, or the scene isn’t working, or the rehearsal didn’t go well, or I didn’t get the part, all of those things.

You just got to like, put a lid on it and just sort of be like, I can’t show that.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah, yeah. And so this, you know, I love, obviously, I have my own pain of being an artist. And I am surrounded by artists.

And I love artists. And, you know, Ringo, we’re looking at that, that also the heartbreak of art and the difference between your creativity, but also the art industry. And so the play also looks at how much economics, like dictates what an artist is allowed to do.

Like, we’re in this moment where, you know, AI is like, okay, I’ll just replace locations, I’ll replace backgrounds, I’ll replace actors, like, in so we’re like, what is what kind of art do we need for this moment, at a time when also people are saying, like, ooh, like, you’re not essential. Like, we don’t really need art, we’re actually, we need art so desperately to try to make sense of what how the heck we’re going to get out of this mess.

[Phil Rickaby]
You know, the thing that have been sort of rolling around in my brain about the whole AI thing is there’s industries where it’s displacing people. And they’re like, people like, oh, they’re trying to make an AI actor, and they haven’t been very successful at it yet. Because they’re terrible.

But you know, they keep trying. And at some point, that may happen. There’s two things that I that I think about there.

And one is that audiences like to connect with the person off screen. And if that person does not exist off screen, it is difficult for them to connect with it.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah, I’ve never thought about that.

[Phil Rickaby]
On the other side, they can do all they want with on screens. But theatre is the one place that will can only always be organic. You cannot replace the actors in the theatre with AI.

Everybody is in that room breathing together. So theatre becomes actually more essential, more vital and more exciting in a world where AI is replacing actors and artists on screens.

[Susanna Fournier]
I know, I kind of find it fascinating that there’s now this idea of like, oh, theatre is going to become this new prestige art form because of the novelty of it being real people in real time. And like, I’m all for anything that gets more people to see theatre. And I think my question inside of that is, okay, but still, then what do we mean when we say theatre?

Do we mean a well-made play? Do we mean American naturalism? Do we mean German expressionism?

Do we mean the in-your-face movement from Britain? And so for my work, and also what Tate Grenbeau explores, is like, what is the form of theatre? Like, what are all the different forms of theatre?

And how can we use form to tell a story in a different way, or to turn a story on its head, or to disrupt the audience from what they expect? You know, audiences are kind of used to like, I want to go, I’m going to be a voyeur. And we’re like, what if you’re not?

Like, what if the play doesn’t behave? What if we keep surprising, you know, and Tate Grenbeau asks us to look at like, how much do we give in to the momentum of history, or the momentum of the narrative, right? And like, or we choose the path of least resistance in our lives, in art, in our career path.

Like, what happens if we go like, actually, this story doesn’t work for me anymore? What story do we put in our place? Or how do we become the authors of our story, rather than just sort of like, I don’t know, my life just kind of happened, or, you know, capitalism just kind of happened, or, you know, housing prices are insane.

You know, like, what is, you know, what is, what is our agency really, inside how we define the story we’re going to live out in our lives?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. One of the things that I think that always there’s a, there’s a thing about theatre where it, it, it, it, you cannot really be complacent. You are not quite a four-year in that space, because it’s not like watching a movie or watching TV.

You’re everybody in the room. And you know what? You could stand up and you could start shouting in the stage, right?

That can happen. Somebody could stand up and walk out and make a big deal. Somebody could, could yell at the stage.

They could throw things. Like, these are all things that could happen because we’re all in the room. And there’s an, a certain tension that exists because of that.

And I think that it’s, it, it, it belies complacency. You know, you, you, you cannot just sit back in the theatre regard. I mean, sure, maybe if you’ve seen Grease for the 50th time, maybe, but, but generally it’s a very difficult thing to, to, to just sort of like sit back and just like watch a play that you’re not really engaged with.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. Well, you’re speaking to like, for me, that’s my understanding of theatre is that contract, right? Like we, I have said like, watch this.

And you said, okay. And now we’ve created the relationship of theatre, whether or not we’re in a theatre or anything doesn’t really matter. But I’m interested always as a writer is like, what’s possible inside of that relationship, which doesn’t mean I’m going to be like, get on stage, do something you’re not.

But what happens when we draw awareness to that relationship, to that delicate, you know, act of participation, and then what’s possible if we start to, again, like, fuck with it, you know, change it, shift it. Not that we’re like, ted, the director always says like, oh, I’m always worried if the art’s going to start participating at me or, or, you know, kind of force me into a participation. But even just drawing awareness to, as you said, like we’re both here, we’re both active in this moment, does something different to that relationship and reminds us of our agency as audience.

And that’s something I am in a lot of my work is interested in looking at that relationship also for a symbol of our relationship as citizens, our relationship as people living in a community.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It’s a fascinating thing. I’ve done a couple of solo shows, and I’ve seen a few solo shows in my time in the moment when if the actor chooses to look at the audience, I’m like, you’re my scene partner, which sometimes they do my favorite ones are when they do, it changes everything in the room when the actor is like looking at the audience, because that third wall, that fourth wall does not exist.

And there’s a connection that’s made. And it’s a magical thing, where it’s like, oh, oh, oh, you see me?

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
And it sort of breaks down that, that wall, you know?

[Susanna Fournier]
And it’s such a scary thing, like in some of my shows, because I love direct address. And like, I’ll often have, you know, sections of a play that almost feel like a TED talk, like, we’ve kind of departed a bit from character and we’re, we’re exploring and our characters working through an idea. But I’ll say like, when the characters are talking to the audience, they are actually doing that.

They are not pretending or like, you know, looking to the horizon. And that takes a certain kind of vulnerability, again, from the actor and confidence to not dress it up. To be like, it’s going to be powerful enough if I just ask you this question.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. And it’s hard to know, like, right? Because sometimes the actor can feel like, no, I have to be doing something, right?

I can’t just like, ask the question, I need to do something, but the more impactful thing can just be to like, let the words do it.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah, well, we talk a lot, like, in our rehearsal, there’s, you know, a lot of my work has like, okay, I’ll start with like, too many ideas, like a lot going on. And the process for me is always moving towards that simplicity and finding the most powerful line, or the most powerful gesture, you know, if I can cut a line, because an actor can do it, like, amazing, right? But let’s have less words.

And moving towards trusting, you know, the power of that one line, or that one look, or, or just that the actor takes a step closer. And that’s when I have the most fun as a writer in a room, because storytelling isn’t just words, it’s all of, it’s all of the accumulative design elements of theatre, it’s in where they’re standing on the stage, like everything you do on stage, tells a story. And so it’s like, is that the story we’re telling?

Or is it more like this? Oh, we need to go here. And I think that’s what I love about being in rehearsal, especially with a new text, is that you get that opportunity to really refine the words and the story down to its most potent elements.

And we’re doing a lot of that in Tigrinbow. And because we’ve, I’ve worked on this play for 12 years with the Howland Company, it has had probably the most draft of anything I’ve ever written. And it got like, way out there, it had a whole section when it went on this like, economic lecture, and there was like, weird, you know, like, like just mashing together tons of ideas, because I was also looking for, you know, how do we connect these ideas of what is hell?

Right? If it’s called a season in hell, well, what is hell? Is hell, you know, let’s not go to a Christian place with it.

But like, for me, I was like, well, I don’t know, hell feels like being an artist. Like, this feels like hell. Writing feels like hell.

Trying to pay my rent feels like hell. And we’ve ended up realizing that we’ve created this coming of age story, because we started working on it when we were those fresh emerging artists, asking these big questions, railing against the machine, like, huge ideas. And now, like Howland Company is, is a group of artists over the last, you know, 1215 years, have cut their teeth, they’re like producers, they’re, you know, they’re, we’ve all developed, we’re all, we’re just all older, you know, and we’ve lived through things, and we’ve had our hearts broken, and we’ve learned skills.

And so it’s really amazing at this moment to look back on this work and see how, see our own development inside of it. And also like, the work, I think, as artists mature, too, they get, they get simpler, like, there’s less of a need to like, prove yourself. And so it’s, it’s amazing working on this piece, which acts as kind of this love letter to like Toronto 2014 to now, in terms of like the indie art scene and kind of the, the different moments and intensities that have taken place.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’m curious about how this play came to the Howland Company, how ted witzel came into it, like, how did all of these people come together for this play? How did you bring the play to Howland? How did it, how did it happen?

[Susanna Fournier]
It started, it started really through, like, conversations and kind of really in that sense of scrappy artists looking for opportunities. And I remember meeting the Howland Company because they, I knew Adrian Warringstar and some of the original founding members, and they were like, we’re having a launch, we’re starting a theatre company, which like every person who graduated theatre school is like, I’m going to start a theatre company. And they actually did, and they stuck with it, which is super impressive.

But they invited me to the launch party. And when I met that, like, Hallie and Cam and Courtney and Ruth and Paolo, and they were talking about like, well, we want plays for like big cast. And we want plays for young people, because they were, well, we’re still young, we’re still young.

But it kind of came to be like over a snack table, to be honest, because I was reading Rimbaud at the time. And I was like, oh, well, I want I’m kind of working on this weird thing, but it could have a large cast. And so they said, oh, do you want to kind of read some scenes?

And we were just kind of looking for, they were looking for stuff to work on. I was looking to test these ideas. So I started in this workshop place.

And at first, I was just workshopping it with them for a couple months. And it allowed me to write a first draft. And then at the same around the same time, I had met ted, who was working on Lulu at Buddies.

And he and I fell into a collaboration. And then through that, I said, well, you might want to come hear this play. And he said, Well, this is really weird, and probably unstageable.

Sure, I’m in. And, and we would kind of work on it, and then go away and work on other stuff for a year, two years, and then come back. And so it was very on and off.

But all the work we were doing in between, whether it was Lulu, or Caroline and Casimir, or Punk Rock for Howland, we were kind of just figuring out who we are as artists. And then after I produced The Empire, which was in 2018-2019, I was like, very tired of theatre, and kind of took a break. And then the pandemic hit and everyone took a break.

And when ted was then appointed to the Artistic Director of Buddies, I thought, hey, if there’s any theatre in Toronto, that it makes sense to do this play at it’s Buddies, we should start a conversation with Howland. And so we just decided to have a reading. And I had written a new draft.

And we all thought like, wow, it’s at that point, 10 years later, and I decided to make it a period piece at that point. And, and it just felt like all the puzzle pieces had arrived in the right place. And that we all had the skills, both aesthetically and the producing structure, to make something like this happen.

[Phil Rickaby]
I do love that ted’s reaction was, I think this is unstageable, we should do this.

[Susanna Fournier]
We should do it. I mean, that’s a common reaction to a lot of my work. And, yeah, I think like ted, in my collaboration, he and Leora Morris were some of the biggest champions of the Empire.

And it wasn’t really until I met him, and I handed him my three plays, that he was the person who was like, wow, these are weird. And I think they should actually be weirder. Not less weird.

And so he gave me like, Reed Sambooshner, and him Freed Hamlet machine, and, and opened up the possibility that I was actually wanting to work with theatrical form in a way that not a lot of Canadian theatres do. And not a lot of our playwrights necessarily do, or at least the ones that I had been experiencing. And so he opened my eyes up to, to like role models and artistic heroes that I could kind of go like, what are they doing there?

And it means that there’s a stronger relationship in my work between the text and the production, which is why when ted and I work together, I’m very active in the rehearsal hall, and our process is very collaborative. And he’s very patient when I’m like, what is happening? He’s like, it’s that, but it’s that, if the lights do that, then that it means this.

And so we have a very holistic approach. But we have that similar desire for really ambitious art. Because I think what I’m most excited by in this theatre is not necessarily if something succeeds, but that it reaches for something that I haven’t seen before.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You mentioned being in the rehearsal hall, you know, you came from rehearsal. I’m curious what your role is in the rehearsal hall as the playwright of this play.

And how does how does that differ in this play than in previous works you’ve produced?

[Susanna Fournier]
I think it’s a lot more active in this process. I find every time because I work with a form, every time I write a play, it’s a very different process. Like I don’t know where I’m necessarily going.

And then every time I rehearse a play, it’s a different, it’s sometimes the texts need a lot of changing in the room. And sometimes they don’t, it kind of depends how I’ve structured the piece and how much we’re relying on character and action. And also depends on if some of my texts I direct.

And so then I sort of streamline to prove myself. But in this piece, I’m the first week was definitely testing the draft as it as it went into rehearsal, because I had not yet heard that draft, like out loud, very many times. Always I think of draft is overwritten.

Like going into rehearsal, like across the board, it’s always got too many words. But what we discovered in this process, we’re working with a lot of theatrical layers. So we have kind of our adaptation, like season and hell frame.

And then we have our heroes, which are our characters, Paul Verlaine, like characters inspired by Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud, inspired by Sylvia Plath, inspired by Sappho. So we have our hero characters. And then we have the structure of like a memory play.

And that’s all fine. And that’s kind of easy to rehearse. And then it starts to explode.

And so certain layers pop on, certain layers are like, now I’m going over here. And so feeling out how the text is changing form, and then how we’re going to stage that, and then what that means and what it does to the audience is really complicated.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You know, it’s funny, we’re mentioning about how the tendency to overwrite a text, and I do that all the time. And I hate removing things.

It’s so hard to sometimes to remove things. And so what I what I would sometimes do is like, okay, this first draft, I’m writing with pen and paper, I will never overwrite if I write with pen and paper. Only when I’m typing, I can write forever, but my hand gets tired, you know, so I would do that.

And it is much easier for me to add to a text than to start killing babies. You know what I mean?

[Susanna Fournier]
That’s so deep. That’s, wow, I love I’m gonna steal that. It is really hard.

It is really hard to slash a whole scene or, or to, you know, be like, wow, what a beautiful monologue. I don’t need any of it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking.

[Susanna Fournier]
That could that could have been six hours just crafting that scene. That could have been a whole weekend. You could have had any sort of emotional revelation.

Like I also find when I’m writing theatre, all of the characters, like goals and loves and wishes and fears are, are coursing through my body. You know, because I’d have to kind of embody and I’m trained as an actor as well. And you are too.

But it’s like, I go inside of that, that POV. And I live that, but from all sides, right? So I always love every character, because I equally fought for them in my heart.

And, and so then when you, or you just you get attached, like, oh, that’s such a great joke, or that’s such a great line, or, but ultimately, if it’s gonna weaken, you know, writing is not for you, it’s for the audience. Right?

[Phil Rickaby]
So I know it’s, and that’s the tragic part of it, right? Because, you know, you might spend six hours and you love all of these characters. I’m working on something right now.

And two of the characters are terrible. They’re horrible. But I love them so much.

I like, they’re hilarious, but terrible. And you hate them, you love them. And I just like, how do you how do you like, you have to just like, let them cook on the page, you know?

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah, I think I think like, we all, you know, after the first week of rehearsal, I had a lot of rewriting to do. We had two days off, and I probably spent about 10 to 12 hours both days with all the pages on the floor. Just like, thinking through and making like, slashes.

And, and ted is an amazing dramaturge, and the Howland Company and our cast are so generous. And they’re all incredible artists. There’s a lot of really smart writers in the room as well.

I love it when I can be like, does someone else know what the better line is? Just give it like, just, just help me. Like, or do you want to try something there?

Like, I think that line is wrong. Can you just feed me your impulse? Because you get pretty tired when you’re in every day, like, analyzing the writing.

So I always feel like it. It’s hard to get feedback. It gets always hard.

It’s hard if you’re acting, it’s hard if you’re writing, it’s hard if you’re the director. But when you’re inside of something, you just you do not have the same perspective as the other people who are watching you be inside of it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Susanna Fournier]
And so I know that like, when ted is watching the writing, and he gives me dramaturgical advice that I’m like, cool, I’ll just go home and like, slash a pen down that page that I love. You know, he’s not doing it because what is on the pages is bad. He’s doing it because we have learned that it actually this moment needs to be this.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Susanna Fournier]
In order to make the whole thing, you know, come to life in the same way. You know, when you first take a pass at a scene as an actor, it’s like, what am I doing? And like, you make a choice, and you think it’s really good.

And then the director’s like, yeah, it’s not that.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, we’ve all made a choice at a rehearsal hall. The important thing is that the room is like, forgiving enough that everybody can go. That was a bad choice.

We don’t need to worry about that anymore. We can move on.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. Or you’re like, I just need to try it again in order to know it’s not that. And I think that going back to the vulnerability, but also the, like, I love the revision process of writing is so different than the first draft generation of a text.

And I always think the other one is better. It’s like, I wish I was just writing a first draft where no one, it doesn’t matter and nothing, no one’s gonna read it. But I think it’s easy, Jim.

You know, I always let myself have read, like, oh, it’s not done.

[Phil Rickaby]
You know, like, I mean, I want it to be done, right? It’s like, I love when it’s done.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
No.

[Susanna Fournier]
Okay.

[Phil Rickaby]
But it’s always that moment of like, you know, the fun part is often like the fun part is like the discovery, the writing that first draft and you’re figuring out who are the characters and all this sort of stuff. That’s fun. And then you have to make sense of it.

You have to sit down and that’s work. It’s like the first draft is the just the fun. You’re at the playground and then you have to do the work, which is a lot less fun sometimes.

[Susanna Fournier]
It can be a lot less fun. It can be a lot more frustrating. You can hit those walls of like, I don’t know what it is.

And I need to know what it is because we open in six days or, you know, like, because the lighting had built around this thing. And I think that’s why, like, this kind of process, you really have to be working with a team of artists like that, like the Holland Company, like ted, like the cast members that we have, because they know what it is to be inside of a new play and a new play that is working with form in an experimental, in an ambitious way. So that that tolerance for that discomfort is something that everyone’s like, you know, it’s not their first rodeo.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, the thing about Buddies is that we’ve talked a couple of times about discomfort and how that can sometimes go away in some theatre environments. Buddies at bad times does not shy away from from discomfort. And in fact, often in a lot of the work embraces discomfort.

Could this play what I mean, obviously, I think the answer is obviously no. But like, if this play didn’t have a home at Buddies, what what would be its future?

[Susanna Fournier]
I mean, it’s hard to know. I think I think right now, like, I worry all the time that I’m setting my playwriting career on fire with this play, because I’m like, there’s some hard critiques of like, risk averse programming, what we have allowed as audiences, how art is not striving, we’re living in this place of like, every movie’s a remake, like, like, we’re in this cultural moment of like, what? And so I think those are questions that we need to ask on stage.

Like, I think we need to ask, what are we doing here on stage? And I think we need to, you know, a part of me was like, I want to take all the conversations I hear people having in the art scene, and I want to put them on stage. So that’s where I’m like, I don’t know if I have a career.

I don’t know if any theatre will program me in the same way that Rimbaud was like, what is happening to poetry? What is this art form right now? So if it weren’t for Buddies, I don’t know that this play in 2026, in Toronto, as it is right now would happen anywhere other than let’s say, like a Sourworks, or, you know, a more indie, independent collective.

But what I love about what Buddies is doing, is that they’re also saying like, no, this play needs a resourced theatre, this play can’t, you can’t strike this play in 15 minutes. And that’s something that I always found really challenging as a young writer, is that I was my only option seemed to be like, a Sourworks or a Next Stage. But that really limits the scope of what you can do in terms of production and design, because you’re like, oh, I gotta sit in that set in that two by two square.

It’s got to come down in 10. Not that those are amazing vehicles for for new artists trying that ideas. But like, I am an artist who I love vision and scale.

And I love design. And, you know, I think about the most transformative moments for me in a theatre, usually aren’t even like dialogue. It’s like, oh, man, and then it went purple, and it started snowing.

And there was that music and the, you know, so I really want to make work that feels epic, and like a rock concert and dreamlike, and really leans into what the magic of atmosphere that theatre can do. And Buddies is a very adventurous place to do that, because the audience is expected.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It’s funny, you’re mentioning the how sometimes it’s a moment that isn’t dialogue that sticks with you. And that is so true.

I remember when I saw Tim’s Convenience at Fringe the first time, and the last moment is just like the sun with the pricing gun. And it was the most moving thing I’d seen at Fringe that year. And it was like, there’s no dialogue there.

This is just a moment. And it’s perfect. And those are those are so powerful.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah, because if the story has, has worked its way, if we created that momentum, created those stakes, then giving those payoffs is is also something that we’re working on right now in rehearsal is like, okay, well, we still introduce the audience to these characters and these relationships. And there’s a love triangle and will they won’t they and, and all of those delicious reasons that we watch people. So how do we how do we also pay off make good on our promises that we’ve introduced you to these people that we want you to care about, but also subvert your expectations of of what you’re watching?

Yeah. And that’s, that’s such a fun challenge for us in the room.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. You were talking just a second ago about about how you the critique of the industry and that sort of thing that comes into there. And it’s a weird thing.

So I was talking earlier about the, you know, the shoulder check when you’re about to say something critical about a theatre or an organization. And yet, by having these conversations, like these are the conversations we have when we care about a thing. Yeah, right?

Like, we wouldn’t have the conversations if we didn’t love or find it important to have the conversation. And yet, sometimes we fear that like by having the conversation, we’re like blacklisting ourselves, when we are so passionate about wanting the industry and the thing to be so much better. It’s a weird tightrope walk.

[Susanna Fournier]
It’s such a weird tightrope. And for me, I think I really it’s this weird paradox where I love the theatre’s ability to cut right to the truth of something. But it does that through a fake thing.

Like it does that through illusion. And I think, you know, I’m not, I’m not necessarily interested in just being like, theatre sucks, or what the heck is going on? Or we know what it’s like, it’s what you said.

It’s like, because we care. Like, because I care so deeply about this art form, and everyone else, if you’re still doing theatre, like you’re not doing it. No, you’re not doing it for the money, but you’re doing it because at one at one time theatre changed your life.

It changed you and somehow, yeah, it like showed you something, it offered you something that the world had not yet offered you.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Susanna Fournier]
And so how do we fight for theatre to still do that? And not just become a movie on stage, or, you know, or to not have so many artists feel like they can’t try something, because no one’s trying something, right? Or they’re like, oh, I have to do it.

You know, I remember writing one of my first plays in the trilogy, and I, and I wrote a sentence, and I thought, oh, I can’t do that, because that’s going to be too expensive. And I was like, why is that limiting? You know, or I can’t write this play, because you can’t do it at a festival, you can’t do it at Fringe.

So therefore, I can’t write. Because that’s what we’re teaching a generation, a new generation of artists, that, you know, you better write that show that’s going to get programmed. Well, one, what is that show?

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, it’s funny, you know, I think that that’s one of the things that as somebody who’s self-produced, it’s in the back of your head, and you almost have to take it, throw it away. Because if you’re the writer, that’s not your problem.

[Susanna Fournier]
Not your problem.

[Phil Rickaby]
You know, you just write the thing, somebody else has to figure out how to put it on the stage, right? I was in a very lo-fi silent film style play, where we had a train chase on top of a train. And we were like, how are we going to do this?

I don’t know, we’ll have to figure it out. And we came up with the most lo-fi way of doing it that was so effective. So like those kinds of constraints make so much brilliance.

[Susanna Fournier]
Well, and because theatre is, you know, unlike film, it is a place that operates on metaphor, right? We’re back to that symbolic relationship of like, I’m going to, you do the, you watch and I’m going to transform the world. And I, you know, you can pick up an object that’s a chair and go like, this is a castle, right?

We’re in a town, you know, you can just cast a spell and change the rules of reality. And I think that’s why theatre is essential. That’s why we need theatre, because we need it to solve problems with our imagination.

[Phil Rickaby]
100%. It’s the difference between if somebody goes to a movie, they’ll come where they’re like, the special effects weren’t great, you know, but here we are on stage. And like you said, they’re going to be like, this chair is a castle.

And everybody in the audience goes, that chair is a castle.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. Or you pick up a weird singer puppet and you’re like, this is my dad. Yeah.

And you’re like, that’s his dad. It’s his dad.

[Phil Rickaby]
Everybody just goes with it. And it’s this wonderful suspension of disbelief that we only have in the theatre now.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. And that’s why, like, that for me is why theatre is so essential, because we are moving culturally to a place where critical thinking is going down, imagination is going down, attention spans are going down. And yet, attention span, imagination and creativity are the things that allow us to solve problems.

They allow us to solve problems in our relationships, in our world, in our environment. And so like, I’m fighting hard for, we have to look at also painful truths, we have to build a tolerance for, for leaning into risk, and not just choosing the safe thing. And, and I, I don’t, you know, I kind of say like, I don’t feel that I have anything to lose as a playwright by offering this because, you know, my work isn’t necessarily like, oh, I’m gonna lose that Mervis show.

It don’t, like, I don’t work in the commercial realm.

[Phil Rickaby]
So few of us do, like, not many of us are writing the next big bunch of musicals. So that’s not gonna be on Mervis’s radar, you know?

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. And it’s not anything against folks who are like, I want to make these commercial big, big hits. But for me, it’s like, I’m interested in theatre that is asking us to think about the here and the now and feel the here and the now, not just distract us.

And so this, like, take rimbaud is entertaining. I love making people laugh. I love laughter is such a power mode tool.

But it’s like, we can do both. We can, we can feel into these characters. And we can ask big questions about where society is.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, we have to do both. That’s what makes it not slapstick. It’s not just a short film.

It’s not, you know, if it’s a comedy, we need the drama. If it’s a drama, we need the comedy. We can’t do all one thing.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. And theatre is that space where, as you said, like, it’s now so powerful when people come together in this in the same room, we put our phones away. And we are asked to be together and witness something.

And we’re like, it sounds weird to say, but we’re losing our ability to even do that.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think the good thing is that theatres are kind of an enforced space where that happens. Even in movie theatres, like, you know, occasionally somebody pulls out their phone and very quickly people are like, put that thing away. But in the theatre, it doesn’t happen as much.

People are more likely to have their phone away. But the other thing that I find and the thing that gets me about theatre is like those moments that don’t really happen in movies quite as much where the audience goes completely silent because they’re all holding their breath because there’s a moment on stage that’s happening and people are leaning forward and everybody is just like so tense. And it doesn’t happen in the same way in film.

It only happens in theatre. And that moment will happen. And then everybody, everybody exhales together.

And those moments are so magical that I think we chase those.

[Susanna Fournier]
We like, we do chase those. And I think it’s, you know, this show asks a big question, like it’s asking us, like, what is the value of beauty and feeling and catharsis and art? Is this a form of resistance against ugliness?

Against, you know, dehumanization? And so it’s asking, like, if we’re turned into this world where everything is valued through an economic lens, which it’s like this play is kind of rejecting. It offers a rejection of that being the way that we offer something value.

And so there’s this tension moving through the play and Rimbaud is really championing what is the, we need beauty. It’s not actually a luxury item. It’s not, it is essential.

And that moment you speak of, that awe moment where we feel and are a part of something that is bigger than ourself. Because the fact that we are in a collective room and we are all having this experience together is actually what makes it powerful, more powerful than if we had it by ourselves. And that’s what, you know, we’re in the rehearsal process.

We’re aware of like, okay, what, how do we build to, where are those moments and how, how can they happen? And we’re, and to compose that, not just through text, but also through the design, through the music and, and offer, hopefully, you know, what we’re striving to is offer that moment of, I saw something bigger than myself. I saw something I can’t see on TV.

I was a part of something that I couldn’t get anywhere else, but the theatre.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Susannah, I would like to sort of change gears a little bit.

I want to talk a little bit more about, less about, take Rimbaud and more about yourself as an artist. How did you first discover theatre and how did you figure out that it was a thing that you wanted to do?

[Susanna Fournier]
I think my first experiences of theatre as a kid were probably pantomimes, like at local theatres. I spent a lot of, of my childhood in Nelson, BC, and we had a regional theatre there and there was always a Christmas show, like a Christmas panto. And I always liked going, but that was the only version of theatre I had really seen.

And then we did a, they did a March break theatre camp and me and my friends signed up and it kind of just felt like playing with my friends. Cause we played a lot of make like dress up and make toys, which looking back, I was like, Oh, I was just doing theatre all the time. And we would adapt fairy tales and put them on.

And to me, that just felt like play. And then we moved to Markham when I was about 14. And I ended up seeing a movie version of Daniel McIver and Daniel Brooks house.

[Phil Rickaby]
I know the one you’re talking about. I rented it on, I guess VHS at the time because I missed seeing it in the theatre. And I was like, I read it and I was like this, I have to see.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. So it was weird because I was watching a VHS of a movie about a play, which is takes place very much in the theatre. So one question I had was like, wait, you can make a play like that.

And also you can make a movie about a play like that. And that made me curious because I’d never seen theatre do that. And that’s a very clear example of like, they break the fourth wall.

They talk about the fact that they’re doing a play. And I was like, what is this trickery? And because I had just moved to Markham, I ended up auditioning for Unionville high school, which had a regional arts program at the time.

And I thought I was going to go do the painting, like the visual art course. But I was like, I’m kind of curious, like they have a drama program. Like, can we just go and sit in on an info session?

And in the info session, I think what some grade 11 students did a scene from Who’s Afraid of Rituals, just like a while. And then someone did a clown turn. And I was like, I’m just kind of curious.

So I auditioned, like I wasn’t one of those kids that was like, I want to be an actor. I want to do this. I think I was just always kind of doing it.

And I got into that program. And I really enjoyed it. And it was really my lifeline through high school and coming out of high school.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to go the way of creative writing or theatre school. So I kind of applied to both. And I ended up getting into the acting program at National Theatre School of Canada.

So I went there. But I was still developing my writing at the same time I was I was doing was really actively pursuing both and, and that’s Yeah, and then when I graduated, I came to Toronto and I really had my post theatre school identity crisis and, and suddenly went from doing the thing I loved every day, six days a week to like, serving in a restaurant and not knowing how to be a person. And I ended up doing an internship with Knightwood Theatre.

And that really plugged me into playwriting. And, and I felt, I felt interested in how I intuitively had these questions when it came to writing that seemed to be helpful. And I thought I should ask myself these questions.

But yeah, I really pursued acting and writing for the same simultaneously for about 17 years.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s funny, you’re talking about that that crisis after graduating from theatre school, which I think anybody who’s gone through theatre school has experienced that. Because I don’t know about you, but they spent a lot of time talking about, we’re going to tear you down, and then we’re going to build you up. But they spent a lot of time tearing us down.

And they spent zero time building us back up.

[Susanna Fournier]
And why are we building us up? No. And they’re not allowed to, they’re not allowed to do that anymore.

I know.

[Phil Rickaby]
I know. And that is good. I, the, the, some of the changes that I’m seeing in the theatre schools are good for everyone.

Because that whole psychological torture of tearing down and building back up is horrible.

[Susanna Fournier]
It’s horrible. It’s, I teach a lot of acting now and I teach at theatre schools and I’m very, like, I just always go like, what do I wish I had been taught? You know, and I don’t want to discredit, I had really amazing teachers, but sometimes I’m like, how can I save these students’ time?

You know?

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, I mean, it’s, it’s the thing of like, a lot of times, especially, you know, when I was at theatre school in the early nineties, I felt like a lot of the teachers were teaching me the way that they were taught. And that’s just the way we do it. I was taught this way and this is how we teach.

And there was no questioning of like, why that, that we’re taught that way? Yeah. Why does it feel borderline like torture or like, uh, uh, abuse?

[Susanna Fournier]
Whiplash. But I think what you said too, is like, the model was like, we’re training actors to go to these conservatory, like we’re training actors in a very specific way. And I, you know, I was at NTS in the early two thousands and my cohort, I feel like, you know, Sherry Lee was running the school at the time and she was really taking creative people.

And a lot of people of her kind of generation have gone on to be directors, writers. So I think she was also aware that in Canada, like you’re probably not going to just get hired by the festival.

[Phil Rickaby]
Like the odds are against that happening.

[Susanna Fournier]
The least amount of actors will actually, yeah. You know, a lot of you will go into film and TV or, you know, if you’re going to be in Canadian theatre, it’s because you’re a creator. Like, I think we’re a much more creator driven industry then, you know, I don’t know.

Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
London. No, but we are because it’s a different model here. And I don’t know what it’s like in London, in the UK, but here, if you are, if you’re going to have any kind of career, you have to learn how to produce your work.

You have to learn how to put something on. And that is not something that was even on the radar when I was in theatre school, nobody was talking about self-producing. And I know they are now, but man, it was a long time coming.

[Susanna Fournier]
It took a long time. Like I, I was really mad as a young playwright that I was like, what do you mean I have to put up my own show? Like I, and I’m still mad about that.

But also to do the empire, I went to generator, did the artistic producer training program, Christina Lemieux saved my life. You know, all the educators there taught me how to, how to make that project successful. But I just tell artists now, like, if you want to work in this field, you have to make your own work.

And, and that’s an empowering thing. We shouldn’t think of it as like, yeah, it can suck, but also you get creative control and you can figure out how you want to spend, you can design your process. You can prioritize funding what matters to you.

And you don’t have to do the model of two weeks rehearsal, one week tech, you know, you can design your own model. And so that really allowed me to, to feed my creativity because I could design a process that would support it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, it’s funny because you’re exactly right. You get to design what you want to do and it can, it can, the rehearsal process can take however you want it to be.

When I was working on the silent film play, we worked on that for years because we first had to look at what, like, what does sound, how if you’re trying to translate that art form to the stage, it’s not the same. So what does it look like? Is it clown?

Is it this? Is it that? Is it Bufala?

Like how, how do you get there? And so we spent years figuring that out before we got into like building a show. So like, you can do that in an independent way.

You’ll never find funding to do that outside of, outside of that kind of work.

[Susanna Fournier]
And I love like hearing about your project. These are the projects I’m most interested is, is when an artist has a question and also an aesthetic question. Like, what does it mean to do a silent film play?

Oh, we’re not going to be able to solve that in two weeks. Like we need to like sit with that and advance it. But ultimately even your pitch, I’m like, well, I want to see that because I’ve never seen that before.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Susanna Fournier]
Right. Like, but I have, like, I can open a lot of season announcements and go, well, that’s literally a remap. Like, okay.

You know, and I, again, it’s, I read this interesting article came out of the UK and it was like, I know we want to make our bottom lines. I know we need to sell tickets, but if we continue to choose safe programming, we’re going to destroy the art form.

[Phil Rickaby]
You know, that is absolutely true. And I think that, that the short sighted view is that the, the safe choice is the right choice because it will bring people in. But if it doesn’t excite people, it’s not going to bring people in, in the longterm.

Right. Like people want experiences. If, if, if the post pandemic world and watching the things that people are going to in this time where they can make the choice to stay home and have all four, as many forms as they want of entertainment at their fingertips, what are they willing to pay for?

It’s an experience. And we have to be able to give them something they can’t get at home and tell them about it. You know, we have to communicate that.

And if we can do that, we could do anything as long as it’s exciting.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s so like, there’s so many ways to talk about like, you know, why does sometimes the theatre scene feel like limited or strangled or, you know, why don’t people know, you know, I talked to a lot of friends who are in theatre. They’re like, Oh my God, I would love to see something like that.

I just don’t know about it. You know, we’ve been talking a lot about how, you know, before when, you know, now magazine was a printed, you know, one would now existed and when it was printed, but this idea that you could, now that everything’s on our phone and everything is online and everything is algorithms, I used to love just picking up a now magazine, you know, if I’m waiting for the streetcar or whatever, I’m in a, I’m in a cafe, I’m having a coffee.

I’m like, what’s happening?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Susanna Fournier]
You know, like what, and you can kind of flip through it and be like, Oh, that sounds cool. Or I’m going to go see, Oh, that music show. Like it’s, it feels challenging when everything is moved into algorithms to have a sense of community and a sense of culture and sense of the scene and a sense of a city where things are, you’re included.

And that’s like a structural problem. I don’t know that artists can necessarily solve, but I mean, it is like the algorithms are the depth of community, right?

[Phil Rickaby]
Like the algorithm is, is, I mean, I’ll be honest.

[Susanna Fournier]
If you solve there, I’m like, yes, I agree.

[Phil Rickaby]
Full stop. Cause you know, it’s been, it was the, it’s the death of, of, of, it was a death of Twitter. It was, it’s the death of Instagram.

It is the thing that, that could, because your experience online is no different from my experience online. There’s no, there’s no community there. And there must be some way that we can break out of this because you’re right.

The tactile nature of now, there are so many things I did back in the day that I never would have found out about if it wasn’t for that newspaper, either seeing the cover or sitting in a coffee shop or at a bus stop, flipping through it and being like, there’s a what, you know, it just like decided that you’re going to go to that. Like, I don’t know how we get that back again, but we need to.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. I, I, I mean, people were like 2026 is the year of the analog. And I’m like, I can’t get back there fast enough.

Like I I’m like, let’s all read physical books and go to actual restaurants. And, and, you know, I think we live in a really expensive city. So I, I, I like have to just acknowledge that we are fighting against like a city that is becoming harder and harder to like actually live in.

But it feels this is why it feels like going to support local going to a cafe going to a piece of theatre going to see an indie art show open at a space. Like those are the experiences that make me want to live in a city. And I feel that for me, what what I can do is to try and just like one, just like step one, show up.

Like, if I want the city to, to have community to have a feeling of, of togetherness, I have to like, overcome my like, I don’t know if I want to commit or I don’t know, I’ll see on the day I’m like, what if I just radically commit to showing up to these events because I, I want to feel that togetherness or I want to be in a space where I’m in a community. And if artists are giving me the opportunity to do that, if, if local restaurants are giving me the opportunity, then what I can do to fulfill that relationship is, is literally show up.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And on the theatre front, I know that there are plenty of people who, who, who they think that theatre is Mirvish prices.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

They, because that’s their experience. They go to Mirvish, they go, I can afford to see one show every two years. And they don’t know that these, that so many shows are affordable.

Like it’s not going to break the bank to go see a show at Buddies and Bad Times or, or, or Factory Theatre or Terragon or any of the other theatres. And the thing that we’re lacking is a way to tell them, you know, I mean, I’ll tell them I’ll tell y’all right now, we have $10 tickets.

[Susanna Fournier]
We have $25 tickets. We have $45 tickets, like buy early to get your, if you want to pay that $10 price book, now we have $75 tickets. But I think like, I want to tell people, honestly, right now, a theatre ticket is going to cost you less than Uber Eats in your dinner.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s absolutely true. That’s absolutely true. Cheaper.

And also eating out is now even cheaper than ordering food. That’s right. And eating out at a restaurant also cheaper.

So you buy your tickets. So that’s one night that you didn’t go out and then you can go to a restaurant and go to a show. And it ends up being cheaper than doing both.

[Susanna Fournier]
Doing both. Like it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s weird. Like we’re trying so hard, you know, theatre costs money.

There’s a lot, we, you know, this show has eight actors in it, you know, which let alone is just exciting because, you know, it feels now like you can, it’s like, well, you better do a two hander. It’s so hard. So just the thrill of seeing that many bodies on stage, but I think like, you know, it’s easy to feel disempowered.

It’s easy to get apathetic and, and take Rambo like talks about that a lot too. Like we’re working so hard. We’re tired.

We, it’s hard, you know, we, it’s hard to make a living, but you know, ultimately I want to make a piece of art or an experience. Like I am always so much more grateful that I went out and experienced something than staying home on my couch, which inevitably leads to doom scrolling.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, you’re right. And as an, as an introvert, that’s my nature. My, my nature is sitting at home and like, you know, not going out and it takes a lot to make me go out, but I’ve never regretted it.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. I think like, I don’t know that the world has really recovered from also the isolation of the pandemic and just like we normalized a very strange way to live.

[Phil Rickaby]
We, it is, we have not even scratched the surface of the psychological damage of to several generations that can, that, that is the result of the pandemic. Yes, things were necessary, but we, but we are, we were unprepared for the aftermath. And that’s why so many people seem like they’re feral.

I don’t know if you drive, I don’t drive very often, but when I go out, when I go out and I’m in a car, which is thankfully rare, but like people are feral. It is.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. They’re, they’re, it’s intense. It’s everyone’s like at an intensity that is right below the surface.

And I, but I agree. Like, I don’t think we have, like, I feel like our cultural response was like kind of denial. Like we’re like, okay, let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.

[Phil Rickaby]
That was absolutely the response.

[Susanna Fournier]
Meanwhile, in meanwhile, we have people like literally unable to know how to like, like kids in classrooms don’t really know how to behave. Like we’re all used to being able to just like walk away or mute or put someone or turn our video off. And, and I, I’m like, art, art is the thing that can remind us of our humanity.

[Phil Rickaby]
Full circle. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

It is like all forms of art, but theatre will bring you into a room and connect you with people in a way that, that you were not expecting. If you, if you haven’t done it before. No.

My last question for you is you’ve been working on take rimbaud for 12 years and you’re in rehearsal for its production. What is, how does that feel? And what has surprised you about this process?

[Susanna Fournier]
Well, it feels wild. It feels, I almost never know what I’m going to feel at any given time because it unleashes with it, all of the memories that I have of all the people I have been in those 12 years. And it works like that for the audience as well.

So sometimes it feels like they’re just emotional, nostalgic landmines going off. It means from a text perspective, sometimes I am fighting what the play used to be in its construction versus what it needs to be now. So it’s like, well, I want to pull this thread, but I don’t want to unravel the sweater.

So how am I going to do that? And I think, so then that’s also very surprising. I think the most surprising thing is that I, I found this a lot, that like the challenges we have in our arts are usually the same challenges we have in our life or as people.

And so the play I think what is surprising and very humbling for me and sometimes deeply uncomfortable is when I go like, oh, the play is hiding from the truth in this moment. The play is hiding behind an idea or hiding behind the thing I wasn’t ready to talk about so honestly, 12 years ago. Cool.

Well, of course, I guess I have to feel like feel and then be willing to simplify and own that I cared so much or that I actually was deeply hurt by that or like these characters care so much and are deeply hurt by. So I think, I think what has been surprising is that the play for all of us, you know, ted and, ted and I have had like a really close friendship and collaboration. So he’s also like, oh my gosh, like there’s so much of me or who I used to be or that, that kid who thought they, you know, like, you know, we all kind of think we know everything when we had children in school.

And so I think it’s been really surprising how much we can actually let go of inside of this process and how much the play can change as we have changed and still offer something integral and that that I think this has been really humbling and sometimes just deeply uncomfortable for me.

[Phil Rickaby]
Or back to discomfort.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. Back to vulnerability. My favorite.

[Phil Rickaby]
Full circle.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. Something that was also fascinating from when we were auditioning, we did some auditions for the play, is we realized that this is a very millennial play. And so we had some like much younger actors come in and we were like, oh, they, they haven’t lived through.

Like, it’s not that you have to be millennial, but you kind of have to have like live, you’ve had to do your coming of age story.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. This came, this, this play is not your, is not your coming of age story. You have to have already done that.

[Susanna Fournier]
You have to already do that and be kind of looking back to understand it. And that, I don’t think we realized that was true.

[Phil Rickaby]
Sometimes it’s funny, the things that clarify for you, it could be an audition, it could be anything. Like, it’s funny how that happens.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. Yeah. Like, and like the millennial kind of anxieties and sarcasm and, and all this stuff that I, that I was like, some of these jokes, like, if you’re 20, you don’t, you don’t know how to say this.

Like, you don’t yet know what this is pointing to, right? So that was cool. Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, Susannah, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you giving me some time and it has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you.

[Susanna Fournier]
Yeah. I’ve enjoyed it so much.

[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I’m going to tell you about who my guest is next week in just one second. But first, let me tell you about my Patreon because I cannot make this podcast without the people who’ve chosen to back me on Patreon.

It costs money to make a podcast. It costs money to have a website. Editing software costs money.

I have to host the audio files and distribute them. I’m creating images for every episode. Also, there are transcripts and good transcription costs money and I think it’s important to have transcripts for the show.

I’m so grateful to the people who’ve chosen to back this podcast. But we are just covering most of the cost, not even 100% of the cost. If you want to help me to make this show, if you want to help to make this show, please go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. Patrons get early access to episodes, we have conversations about issues in Canadian theatre. The more people who join the Patreon, the more I’m able to offer my patrons. So if you want to be part of that, you want to help me to make the show, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Blythe Haynes. Blythe is no stranger to Stageworthy. And this time, Blythe will be here to talk about theatre in the aftermath of the pandemic and also the filmed version of the Fringe hit, An Atlas, A Necktie, and Other Concerns, now available on CBC Gem as and Other Concerns.

But next week, we’ll be talking to Blythe Haynes. Tune in then.