Stephen Drover is Directing the Macbeth He’s Been Thinking About for Twenty Years

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About this episode:

Stephen Drover has directed Macbeth before; twenty years ago, the day after it closed, he wanted to do it again. Now, as both adapter and director for Bard on the Beach in Vancouver, he’s finally getting that chance. In this rich conversation, Stephen talks about approaching Shakespeare not as a sacred text to be served but as a living collaboration, asking not what the words inherently mean but what meaning is being created in this specific theatre, for this specific audience, right now.

The conversation covers the challenge of stripping away cultural baggage around the witches, to building a post-environmental dystopia as the world of the play, to why Stephen leans into the brutal, blood-soaked reality of the play rather than sanitizing it for comfortable consumption. He also reflects on how becoming a parent has changed the way he receives Macbeth’s deeply embedded anxieties about children and grief.

This episode explores:

• Approaching Shakespeare as a collaborator rather than a proprietor — and what that means in practice for this production
• The concentric rings of Stephen’s career: actor to director to artistic director to dramaturg
• How a late diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD illuminates why theatre suits his brain so well
• New play development at the Arts Club and the ‘one size fits one’ philosophy
• And much more!

Guest: 🎭 Stephen Drover

Stephen is a dramaturg and director originally from Newfoundland and presently based on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, British Columbia). He holds a BFA in Theatre from Memorial University of Newfoundland, an MFA in Directing from the University of British Columbia, and an MA in Theatre Theory and Dramaturgy from the University of Ottawa.

Since 2018, he has served as Head of New Works and Professional Engagement at Arts Club Theatre Company, where he leads the commissioning and development of new plays. His dramaturgical work there includes projects such as Forgiveness (Hiro Kanagawa), Redbone Coonhound (Amy Lee Lavoie & Omari Newton), and The Cull (Michele Riml & Michael St. John Smith).

For Bard on the Beach, he has worked as a production dramaturg for Harlem Duet, he adapted the script for their celebrated production of Julius Caesar, and he directed Hamlet in 2024.

He is a four-time recipient of a Jessie Richardson Award for directing, has worked as a director or dramaturg on over 60 professional theatre productions across Canada, and has published research on Shakespeare adaptation process analysis in Shakespeare Bulletin. Stephen has taught and directed at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Douglas College, Neptune Theatre School, and the University of British Columbia. He sits on the board of LMDA Canada.

🪶 Check out MacBeth at Bard on the Beach: https://bardonthebeach.org/whats-on/macbeth/

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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 theatre makers of all types, from actors to directors to playwrights, producers, stage managers.

If they’re involved in theatre in Canada, I talk 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. Stick around to the end of the episode, and I will tell you about who my guest is next week.

But let’s jump into this week. My guest this week is Stephen Drover. Stephen is a director and dramaturg.

He’s currently adapted and is directing Macbeth for Bard on the Beach in Vancouver. So check this out. I love this conversation with Stephen, so here is my conversation with Stephen Drover.

Stephen Drover, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you giving me some time. You’ve adapted and you are directing Macbeth for Bard on the Beach.

What? I mean, normally I might ask, tell me about Macbeth. This story is timeless, but tell me about your Macbeth.

[Stephen Drover]
Well, it’s a tricky play. I directed Macbeth 20 years ago, and I remember feeling, the day after it closed, I wanted to do it again because I felt like you know, I felt like there was more to plumb and more depths to dig through. And so here I am 20 years later with the opportunity to do it again.

And it’s remarkable the things that I still kind of retain about how I see the play. And also so much has happened in the past 20 years that our perspectives have shifted and our contemporary sensibilities have changed and evolved. So invariably we start thinking about the play differently.

And usually when I’m working on a piece of text for which the source material is Shakespeare, and I say that because typically when I’m working on classical text to Shakespeare, it’s as an adaptation, as some degree of textual intervention to make the text work for today and to treat Shakespeare as a collaborator rather than a proprietor, I think is a great way to start. And whenever I engage with the text, it’s always with a question of like, what is the meaning that’s being created at that moment in this theatre? Not what kind of meaning do the words inherently have?

So I kind of apply, I don’t know a whole lot about semiotics, but I know a little bit, and I know that there’s a difference between what a word was intended to mean and what it actually means as it’s being spoken. So I always go, what is the meaning that is being created? And with Macbeth, it gets a bit tricky because then you get into authorial intent or what Shakespeare wanted.

And you come across, to use an obvious example, this idea of these witches. You know, as soon as we say witch, we get an idea in our brain. And if we were to look at the text of the source material, what we get is an image of three women with beards kind of singing around a cauldron, throwing in eye of neeps, tongue of bat.

Like it kind of sounds like a Halloween sort of image. At least that’s what I think of. And I think, I don’t think I’m alone.

And so I go, is that really what is wanted right now? Or is there something, is there some other meaning that’s needing to be created in this moment? So a lot of the work of working with Macbeth has been about, I’m tempted to say the word deconstruction, but that sounds a little less, a little less disciplined than I intend to be.

But a lot of it is, what is the play? How is the play not achieving the things that I think the play wants to achieve, if that makes sense?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. You know, years ago, I did a production of the play and the women who were playing the witches, we wanted to see like, we know that this is like a fictionalized thing.

This is like, written to appease King James, who was very much a, fancied himself a witch hunter and that sort of thing. So there’s a lot of fantasy in it. And so we thought, can we sit down with a Wiccan priest and like, figure out like, what’s the reality of this?

And after discussions with the priest, we were, we just came to the conclusion that we, within the text of the play, we had to accept it as fantasy. We could not ground it in a reality that didn’t exist. So, it’s a really fascinating exercise to be like, can we make this?

No. Okay. Then we just have to accept that this is what it is, if we’re using these words.

It was an interesting exercise.

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah. And I applaud you for taking that stance, because I think that, I mean, I’ve seen this many, many times and the witches have always been, I’ve seen them portrayed as, as homeless folks, basically at the time they were called bag ladies. I’ve seen them performed as in Roberta Lepage’s Macbeth last summer as sex workers.

And in so many cases, when I see them, I go, I know who that, I know who that is. And I know what that is. And hence dispels kind of the mystery and the eeriness behind it, because the characters in the play keeps going, what is this?

What are these things? We don’t have a template for understanding what I’m looking at. And I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies as inspiration.

And the recurring thing is, is someone being in a position of not knowing what’s going on or like, what is that thing? And what, what is that noise I’m hearing? And what are these creatures?

Rather than, oh yeah, it’s, it’s zombies or whatever. So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of undoing the process of undoing baggage a little bit, cultural baggage and, and, and literary knowledge of the play and kind of seeing if we can steer the play back to some degree of mystery, despite its, its legacy. Yeah.

It’s a, which sounds like very, very lofty and it doesn’t intend to be, it’s just about approaching it with questions rather than we know what this is.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think that, I mean, one of the, the, the problems of, of presenting the famous plays is that a lot of, a lot of people who are working on those plays, we know those plays intimately. Like I’ve done Macbeth myself four times. So I know that play really well.

I’ve done other plays like two times, three times. So when you’re inside them, you know them really well. And you, I think you could fall into the tradition of the play or things like that.

And totally, it can be helpful. I think to remember, even though we know it, there are going to be audience members for whom this is their first exposure to this play.

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah.

And there’s, there’s audiences like, like yourself or like whomever for whom this is not their first experience. So how do you make it feel fresh and how do you make it feel like their first experience? So they’re able to walk away going, I see the play differently now.

Like ideally, ideally someone who comes to see this Macbeth, what I want them to do is go home and read it like right away and go, Oh, I’m really interested in the play. I never thought of it this way before, you know, offering new insider ideas or questions or, or, or proposing new shapes that might be able to be, you know, placed in this container. It’s just like every production is an offer to an ongoing conversation and it’s not about getting it right or wrong or doing it justice or any of that.

Like those, those ways we talk about, you know, making a play, like everything’s a test. It really is just about, this is, this is something that I think you might, you might like to talk about in the car on the way home in context of this play that we already know.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, it’s, it’s one of those things because Macbeth is one of those, but you don’t, ideally you, you don’t leave that play thinking that was nice. You know, there should be, there should be a lot of things to talk about. There should be a lot of things to talk about, you know, what, you know, what do we do about the leaders with the skeletons in their closet?

What do we do with the, the evil the men do in the, like all, there’s so many meaty questions in the show. And if somebody leaves and their, their response was, well, that was a nice night of Shakespeare. That is absolutely what, you know, what you don’t want in the car on the way.

[Stephen Drover]
I know, I know it’s ironic, although we feel pressured to provide that to some degree.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You know, you mentioned doing, doing the play previously and now coming to it again, years later, what were the lessons or the things that you learned in that first production that you really wanted to look at in this one? Oh, that’s a good question.

[Stephen Drover]
I, I think I didn’t interrogate the, the supernatural to any, to a degree that, that deserves to be looked at. And by that, I don’t mean researching what, what supernatural means or, or, but just about, I think at the time I just wanted to make a piece of cool theatre and that was kind of the bar. Is it cool?

And you know, I was, I was in my early thirties and, and so, so much of it was, you know, so much of making theatre is about making cool stuff. And now I, I kind of recognize that as, as aiming for effect rather than entering with some degree of inquiry and, and going, well, I don’t really know, but let’s treat the play as a question and see what it is, rather than trying to massage it to fulfill some sort of product driven vision. And so I entered this time, I suppose to answer your question last time I had a really, what I thought was a fleshed out vision.

And now I have a, a healthy inquiry, I suppose, with a hunch that I, I’m, that sometimes works out and sometimes doesn’t when it’s held up to scrutiny by myself, my colleagues and the other actors. And I go, oh, that doesn’t work at all. So I, I guess I’m, I’m much, I’m much more likely now to toss things out when I go, that doesn’t work.

It’s okay. We’ll do something else. As opposed to like, no, this was my vision.

[Phil Rickaby]
And, you know, we got to like make this, this silhouette work and all that stuff, you know, it is very much like, it’s an example of how the, you know, the theatre is a collaboration and you can’t have a vision, but if something isn’t working, you kind of have to just let that go.

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, and I, I, I always maintain that the work is only as strong as the collaborators in the room.

And I, you know, someone asked me a while ago, what was, what was my, what was the, the, a book that I could recommend for someone who’s learning about directing? And usually someone quotes, you know, something by Peter Brook or, or Meissner or whatever, like something like that. But I, my favorite book is a kid’s book, a children’s book called The King with Seven Friends.

It was written in the sixties and it was just about this King who goes on a quest, but he encounters all these friends, these seven of them, they all have incredible talents. Like one can turn into a tree and another can, can become an elephant. And so on the journey, he uses their talents and strategic ways to win, to get the goal.

And in the end, someone says, you guys did all the work. How come he gets the, how come he gets the prize? And they say, cause he led us like he knew how to, how to harness the talents that were at his disposal.

And he was able to say, well, I’m not actually, you know, I’m not actually particularly talented. I did a play a while ago and I, it was humbling because I go, I think I’m the least talented person in this room. Cause I was surrounded by this, these tremendous artists.

And I was like, just saying to myself, don’t fuck it up. Just like, don’t burn it down. Like me, you know, don’t, don’t disappoint them.

So it really is just kind of, you know, for me anyway, about knowing how to, how to turn those dials and, or, or how to, when to say yes and no, and let’s see. And maybe yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Or you were mentioning like interrogating the, the supernatural in Macbeth and it’s not just the witches and it’s not just Hecate. It’s, it’s, I mean, there is a real sense.

And it’s one of the few plays that I can think of where the idea of the king and the land are one comes into play because when, when Macbeth takes the throne, the, the world goes topsy turvy. There’s like earthquakes and, and, and bad weather is the, you know, there’s all the kinds of these terrible things that are happening because the crown sits on the wrong head. And because he is, he is what he is then, then everything else goes bad too.

And it’s, it’s, I don’t, I don’t know offhand of another one of the plays that interrogates or like, you know, even speaks to the idea of the king and the land are one as part of its supernatural take.

[Stephen Drover]
The, uh, the only, the only other, I can think of two not exact examples, but Hamlet does it a bit when, you know, so many of these plays have the same cycle. They all begin with the death of a monarch and end with the restoration of the monarch. It’s a, you know, it’s, it’s all about the king is dead, long live the king, especially with the history plays.

And, you know, going with the idea that the, an Elizabethan hero is one who restores balance to the world, whereas like a romantic hero, for instance, is someone who changes the world for the better. That if we look at something like Hamlet, the world is thrown into a ray when the proper, when the rightful king is, is murdered. And then when he tells his son to, to avenge his death.

And so there’s this, there’s recurring images of like something’s rotten in Denmark, state of garbage. So that’s not land particularly, but it is talking about Denmark. It is.

And, and the king’s kings and nobles being referred to by name in terms of the land that they are in charge of, which I find very interesting, you know, in, in Macbeth, there’s the Saint of Ross. We don’t know what his real name is, but he’s the, he’s the guy who’s in charge of Ross or in charge, you know, in Saint of Fife, whatever. And the other only example I can think of is Richard III where the, you know, the, the, it, but that’s not land-based that’s kingdom-based that’s the, that’s the ethos of the population that kind of falls into some degree of disrepair.

And, but you’re right, there is something in, in Macbeth about, you know, they, the night that Duncan’s murdered, there’s a reference of like, you know, I dreamt that, you know, chimneys were knocked down and shrieks in the air. I’ve never seen anything like it. And the earth reacts in response to, to, to this upset in the great chain of being.

And so the nothing can restore balance until the rightful heir is back on the throne. We’re kind of taking that into our production a little bit by like kind of leaning a little bit into, well, not a little bit into, but really leaning into a, like a post, a post-environmental environment. So it’s, it’s, it’s very dystopian.

It’s placed at a time after something terrible has happened to the earth. The outside is inhospitable, the air is poison, whatever, which we don’t get into specifics about naming. I don’t think that’s as important as the fact that the earth is rotten or barren or wasted.

And the one person who can maybe get us back on track is Duncan and he’s murdered. So what do we do now? So I’ve, I’ve taken that as inspiration into the, into the production, but yeah, you’re right.

There is something very connected about the land and the, the earth when it comes to, to this play. Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
So you mentioned earlier about Shakespeare as a collaborator. Could you talk a little bit about what that means to you?

[Stephen Drover]
I think, you know, I, I’m not a, I don’t practice bardolatry. I love Shakespeare’s text. I love the, I love this work, but I’m also, I also recognize that it was very, very timely.

I don’t support the idea that I, I always, part of me always bristles a little bit whenever we talk about the work as being timeless because it was of a time. Shakespeare didn’t write it for all time, despite what the editors of the first folio say in their introduction, but he was responding to things that were going on in front of him. And I think I have no proof of this, but I suspect given the, the, the early modern, how much they loved adaptation and how they, they were, they would interpret one another’s work that the, the, the crowning skill or talent was for imitatio, imitation.

You’re, you’re judged not on the, how generative you were for being able to create stories, but in how you could interpret other people’s works. This is why I always kind of go, I, you know, we talk about the original that Shakespeare’s plays are not the original, like he based it on an adaptation and that was based on an adaptation. They didn’t really use the word adaptation because it was just the way they, they did things.

But I, I tend to think that if Shakespeare were around today and he was in the room while we were rehearsing, he would say, oh, don’t say that. Like that, that’s a reference to something thousands of miles away, hundreds of years ago. No one knows what it is.

Let’s, let’s adapt it and let’s get the people today to, to look at themselves and not look at some ancient civilization. So I, I, I, I take that as inspiration to go, how can we treat the text? Not necessarily as raw material, but as the contribution of an absent collaborator.

Years ago, I attended a conference in Louis Doucette, who was the artistic director of play on Shakespeare in Oregon. I attended a round table discussion. She was, she was in, and she said that it was so simple.

She said, Shakespeare is more than just the words. And that kind of changed my perspective quite a bit because it’s true. Like anyone, if Shakespeare is translated into French or German or any other language, like we don’t say, well, that’s not Shakespeare because it’s not the poetry, but we keep saying Shakespeare is the words.

And I’m interested also in Shakespeare, the story or Shakespeare, the mythology that’s generated or, or the, or the permissible containers that it presents into which we can pour ourselves and see our own stuff in addition to the stuff that happened a long time ago. So we’re in some degrees in communication with an ongoing conversation. So taking all that into, into, into, into my heart, I, I embrace the idea of Shakespeare, not as someone whom we serve, but who someone who’s at the table with us while we build and to go with the best of intentions.

What do we think would the, would the playwright do in the room? And in some cases that’s, let’s cut it up and move it around. Let’s not, let’s not worry too, too much about iambic pentameter because it doesn’t, you know, who doesn’t care about audiences?

That’s my joke. But, uh, and I have to go toe to toe sometimes with actors who get upset when I break the meter, but I, it helps them learn lines. But I think that there’s, I think there’s value in massaging, massaging things and to, to, to, to create meaning that might hint at what the, the original audience of the work could have experienced.

Yeah. That’s a long-winded way of answering.

[Phil Rickaby]
Oh, I love it. I love it. Thank you.

Now you are the adapter of this play as well as the director in, in, in that kind of situation when you’re, when you’re doing both, is there a way that you manage the conversation with yourself as the director and the adapter?

[Stephen Drover]
Oh, that’s a good question. Um, to some degree it works sometimes requires outside eyes to, to come in and go, did I get this right? Because I mean, most of the time I’m working with, with playwrights as the dramaturge, my job is to have, is to not really have a creative horse in the race, like to stand outside it so I can say what it’s doing and name it without getting too close to it.

Because I know as a director, like, you know, the night before opening, someone will say to me, how’s the show? Is it going well? And I’ll say, I don’t know.

We’ll see. Like, I have no idea. I think it’s working.

You know, how often do you go to see something and you’re able to name what’s happening to it after one viewing where someone’s been working with it for months, isn’t able to see it because you’d just get too close. So I try to take that lesson to an adaptation process where I kind of need eyes to come in and go, you got this wrong, or, you know, kind of behave a little bit like a playwright and say, Hey, is this, what do you see? And, and how do we, how can we adjust that?

So it’s creating the meaning that we want to create. So that’s part of it. Yeah.

Does that answer your question?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Now you are somebody who wears several hats in your creative life.

You are a director, a dramaturg, you’re a new play developer, teacher, researcher. How do, in your mind, how do those titles, those hyphenates relate to each other? And does each one feed the other for you?

Or are they separate lives?

[Stephen Drover]
They all kind of feel like the same job, man. Like sometimes it’s like, I never, I always avoid hyphenates because like, I just go to make it easy. I’ll say I’m a director because most of the time people don’t know what a dramaturg is.

And if you say scholar, they think you’re a professor perhaps. But for me, it’s all, it’s all kind of extensions of the same thing. I directed for a long time before I started thinking about dramaturgical processes about, you know, five years ago in any, in any kind of substantial way.

And since doing so and going back to school for it, it’s, it’s changed my perspective tremendously on, on, on creative process and, and interpretive process more importantly. But it’s all, it all kind of feels like just extensions of being curious and asking questions and, and, and saying, well, maybe, or let’s see, or let’s see what this is. And I kind of hang onto that right up until, I don’t know, opening night, let’s see what it is.

I don’t actually know what it is yet. And, and again, I take, I take inspiration from, from playwrights who, who were able to play the long game with, with a single play over many years and are able to see a change and to constantly think that, that they’re at a place where they go, I know what this play is, but they’re constantly surprised. I, you know, this old saying that a play is never finished, just abandoned.

And just to give it a chance to, to, to surprise you. And I worked with Amy Lee LaVoie and Omari Newton many times, regular collaborators, but we made a play a few years ago called Redbone Coonhound. And it premiered here in Vancouver, and then it went to Toronto and then it went to Montreal.

And at the end of the Montreal run, they, they said, now we, we think we know what this is now after three productions. That’s when they said, I think we can get this published or whatever. And even now they, you know, because they changed their perspectives, changed their ideas of the play changes.

So that’s, these are, these are labels that you mentioned are just different ways of saying curiosity, I think, and, and to, to absolve oneself from having answers. But, you know, I heard this wonderful thing when I was a student is that a director’s job is not to provide answers, but to generate interest. And I, I, I, that’s, that’s a really wonderful leading value, I think, that I bring into a rehearsal room or a process with a playwright or, or working with a student or, or writing, writing an article or a paper, which I also like doing.

It’s, it’s a different kind of collaboration, but it’s, it’s based in asking questions and, and offering up saying, what do you think? And contributing to a conversation.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Right. You mentioned, you know, you were a director and you, you, you sort of came to dramaturgy.

What sparked your interest in, in, in dramaturgy as a, as a practice?

[Stephen Drover]
The kind of a recurring gesture throughout my, my my life with theatre has been kind of a series of concentric rings. I started rather irresponsibly as an actor because I just kind of wanted to hang out with my friends who were already in the theatre program. So I didn’t, I didn’t enter with a great deal of like, I am born to be an actor.

I just kind of want, or like, this looks fun. And, but then I found after time I had trouble just focusing on the role and I was asking questions of the play. And I remember a professor said, you’re thinking a bit like a director.

So I, I, I wanted to step back and see the play. And so that was great. And, but after a while, I kind of wanted to step back and see the play in context of a larger collection of plays, which is, you know, like producing a season.

So I was starting to think like an, like an artistic director. And so I did that for a while and started thinking about big assembling, assembling a variety of, of experiences and projects for folks. And, and then I, I found myself stepping back even further and going, well, what is a play?

How does a play work? And structurally, how does, how does narrative create a meaning in our imaginations? And, and what is, what is it about storytelling that makes us feel like we’re somehow in, in conversation or communion with those who came before us?

And so that’s, for me, that’s where dramaturgy comes in is what is the, what is the, what are recurring patterns and motifs over time that we apply to different narratives and how can we, how can we take control, not take control of those, but how can we be aware of them as we’re creating new work to, to help generate the kind experiences that we found inspiring to make us come to the theatre to begin with. So that’s a long-winded way of saying it’s, it’s been a process of stepping back and back and back and back and looking at big pictures.

And so dramaturgy for me is the biggest picture.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now we throw the words or I throw the word around, but you know, not everybody who listens to this podcast is, is aware of what a dramaturge is, what dramaturgy is. Just from a certain like reality, what, how would you describe what a dramaturge is to somebody who had no idea what it is?

[Stephen Drover]
No, that’s fair. And it’s, it’s a, that’s a question with a variety of answers and it can be unique to whichever dramaturge you’re speaking with. For me, a dramaturge is, is my job is, is to see it and name it.

And to, and to, and to, and to see patterns between what’s this, this story that we’re working with and the, the reference points that we’re taking from other places. Operating on this, under this idea that we, the way we create meaning is by pulling in experiences and stories from many, many different places. You know, oh, that, that’s just like, you know, that’s just like Richard III or that’s just like Death of a Salesman or that’s just like Terminator or whatever.

Like all these, these basic narratives and how we, how we, we create meaning in them. So it’s my job is to both work with a playwright to tell, to kind of, kind of see what they’re doing. Like, and my favorite metaphor is like, if the playwright is, is the painter and they’re making a painting and the, but they’re on a mural, they’re making a mural and they’re up on the scaffold and they’re getting up very, very detailed and they’re making really small, making small changes to the, to the mural, but they’re up on the schedule too close.

They can’t see it. But the dramaturge is the one on the ground who’s able to tell them what they’re doing. Like, just, this is what I see.

Not this is what you should do, but this is what I see. And this is what it’s called. So consequently, for me, a good dramaturge is a good, a very good basis in, in theory and a variety of modalities and frameworks and understands literary and theatre history and is able to, is able to understand how the, the project that we’re working on walks in a legacy and what that legacy is and how, how things change when you’re, you know, if you’re working on a show and halfway through the show, you realize, Oh, this is a comedy. It’s, you know, it changes the way that you build it.

Or if you go, Oh my God, there’s like nestled within this comedy is a murder mystery. And so then we go, okay, how does murder mystery work? And how do we, how do we turn those corners or apply, apply those, those fundamental shapes that can help us understand it?

Now, this isn’t about finding the right box to put things in, but it is about finding the naming, the echoes that comes with a play. That’s a long winded philosophical way of talking about what dramaturgy is or what a dramaturge does. I mean, really anybody working on a play is doing dramaturgy.

They’re building a play. I mean, dramaturgy is the study of the, of the composition of the drama. How is it composed?

So a dramaturge is a specialist in, in play composition effectively. But I, I will note that for me anyway, as a dramaturge, I’m not, I’m not a creative artist. I’m an interpretive one.

I don’t, I’m not generative. I don’t make things. Um, I, I interpret and have a conversation about it.

If that makes sense.

[Phil Rickaby]
It makes absolutely perfect sense. I am curious if, you know, as, as somebody who was, uh, you know, went from the actor to somebody said, you’re more of a director at that point, had you, did you know what a dramaturge was? And do you think that if you’d been introduced to that, that that’s where your instinct already was going?

[Stephen Drover]
No, I don’t think I would have at the time. It took me some time to come around to this, to, I think I needed to sit in that concentric ring before I was able to, to, to step out and realize, Oh, there’s one more step back. I could go.

And I think that, um, and this is probably apropos your original question about what’s different now in this production of Macbeth and originally as a young director, I kind of bought into the idea of the director as the, you know, the visionary, the person who has like, who sees everything. And, uh, the proof is in the pudding because I was wrong. I didn’t.

And the play didn’t work in a variety of ways. And I, I think because I was probably carrying too much weight and, you know, the theatre has done a very good job or done an interesting job anyway, of, of, of partial portioning out responsibilities over time, you know, a hundred and whatever years ago, there was no director. We didn’t have that.

That’s a job we created because we thought we believed that that would fulfill a need. Same with stage mender, same with intimacy director or intimacy coordinator, which is a job that’s like barely 10 years old. And now it’s, you know, if I do a play, I get a line, a budget line item that says intimacy director without even going, is there any intimacy in this play that required, like nobody holds hands, nobody kisses, but you know, it becomes a, a standard go-to that this is some, this is a job in the theatre that we recognize.

And I think for a long time, I was doing dramaturgical work as a director, but when you’re doing too many jobs at once, and I’m sure you know that, you know, it’s, it’s fine to be the director, lead actor, producer, and writer, but eventually something you’re going to put one of those balls down so you can focus on something else. So I, when I became a director, I, I never considered dramaturgy as anything viable. And I think if you presented it to me, I wouldn’t have understood what it was.

And so I think I had to, to sit in a, in that, in a concentric circle for a little bit longer and fail a bunch, which I did to, to go, okay, maybe I can take a, take a step back and take, kind of take myself out of the, out of the creative equation a little bit and be able so I can name what the equation is, if that makes sense.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You mentioned failure. And I think that that’s the great teacher in any, in any role.

How important do you think failure is for the playwright as they’re producing, as they’re creating their play to not quite make the, the jump to not quite get to where they think they need to go? Are those experiences important in the creation of the play?

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah. And I think it’s, as a dramaturg, I try to do what I can to provide them with opportunities to see those failures or see those mistakes. For me, that’s quite often when a playwright hears a play being read in front of an audience, then they hear it differently and they go, okay, that’s what I’ve written.

And they can go, that doesn’t work. And we can go back to the drawing board a little bit. I reject this idea.

And I think we do anyway, this idea of a playwright sitting alone in a garret up in the, you know, and emerging with this like finished thing. It gets incredibly collaborative. And it was with Shakespeare as well.

I, you know, just to throw out the authorial thing, like who’s who, to whom is this work attributed? It’s invariably a broad list of people who in some capacity contributed to the collection of ideas that make up a play. And I think that the more playwrights can, can have, have access to at least the opportunities to see how it’s not working.

I have yet to meet a playwright who, who has, who has not been thankful for those opportunities. I mean, it’s hard. It’s really hard to, to get notes and to, to be attached to something and for someone to go, you know what, it doesn’t work.

And I, I experienced it, you know, I’m directing the show now. And then, you know, the artistic director will show up and watch a run and he’ll go, yeah, this doesn’t, I don’t understand. This doesn’t make any sense.

And I go, oh my God, I thought it was brilliant. I okay. All right.

And then you process it. And the day later you go, you know what, he’s right. And I can make it better rather than trying to make it fit what I need it to fit.

So I think, you know, my, one of my favorite quotes is from Samuel Beckett and he said, do it again, fail again, fail better. And I, I really love that. And I think that there’s, it’s, it’s a really, it’s really wonderful that we have such a gift in, in new play development processes to put the play in front of an audience before we have to put the play in front of an audience sometimes more than once.

And, and that audiences like a good audience understands process and they’re able to go, okay, this is not a finished product. And the actors are at music stands or whatever. And that this is, everything’s a test kitchen, even a first production of a show.

Yeah. It’s never finished.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s so informative as a, as a playwright, even just sitting around a kitchen table and hearing the play read out loud teaches so much, even just as a cold read. Oh, this does not roll off the tongue the way that I thought it did, or this is clunky, like so much becomes clear. And then to have actors take the time to like, dig into it and like explore it and then hear an, an actual audience react to it.

The audience will always tell you the truth, you know, none of the talk back necessarily, if you do a talk back, but they will always tell you the truth and how they react to a play. And it’s, there’s so much that a playwright can learn just from being in the room for that.

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah. And also they’re able to go, this is who I’m, this is who’s going to be listening because there’s no such thing as a universal audience. A play that works here might not work in medicine hat.

I don’t know. Like, you know, and it’s true. Like we do a show here and it doesn’t work.

We bring it to Toronto and they love it or vice versa because we bring different experiences to understanding the play. So it’s not just about what the play is. It’s about what is the interaction that the play is going to be a part of and how do we need to be mindful of that?

Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’ve seen that so many times on the fringe circuit where somebody will like premiere a show at the Montreal fringe festival and it kills and then they take it to Toronto and nobody likes it. And then they take it to Winnipeg and it’s kind of, you know, it’s like each city reacts differently to each show. And it’s important to just understand that each city’s sensibility is different and how they react to things is different.

You mentioned a ribbon coonhound. I spoke to the authors a couple years ago when it was about to premiere in Toronto. And I’m curious cause you know, I only saw it in Toronto and I know how the audience in Toronto reacted to it, but I’m curious if you know, like what were their differences in the way that the audience has reacted to that show and what they took from that show as it moved across Canada?

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t see the Montreal production. I went to Toronto to see the opening there. So, so I got to see it here in Vancouver and again in Toronto with their very, very different experiences.

I mean, it was part of a rolling world premiere. So there was, those were two different productions with different casts, different directors, but if you know, this effectively the same script and the, the big, because for anyone doesn’t know that this is a play that interrogates racial microaggressions. And so being played in Vancouver, where there’s a very small black population, there’s not many black folks in Vancouver.

I don’t know the numbers, but it’s quite small versus going to Toronto where it’s a different story. Like in, in Vancouver, there would be, you know, an average audience and maybe there’d be like two, maybe black people in the audience. And invariably, because it’s a funny play, the black folks are laughing and the white folks want to laugh and they’re kind of like checking in with the black folks.

We love to laugh at this kind of, you know, like, this is all right. But then we go to Toronto and everybody felt, oh, this is, you know, it, it, it was, it had a different, a different sense of, of caution or less of it anyway, in, in, in Toronto than it did here. And, and you know what, it might be different with different, with different, different shapes, like a play.

That’s that falls in Toronto might be received here differently because people understand it in a better or differently. So it was, it was remarkable to see how, how those two audiences in those two towns recognize themselves in the play in different ways or didn’t. Yeah.

Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
One of the, one of the hats that you wear is the head of new works at the arts club, which is the largest urban theatre company in Canada. Yeah. What does your, the new play development pipeline look like and how do you think about the, what play, well, really what plays, what kind of plays get your attention for development or what, what makes you think of something as, as something that you want to see developed more?

[Stephen Drover]
No, that’s a good question. Like our new play development program is geared almost exclusively to developing the works that we commission. So it’s not, you know, folks will occasionally sometimes approach us with an idea for a script or, or a script that’s like part written or fully written to say, we’d like to, you know, would you develop this for us?

And I have to explain it. It doesn’t work that way. You don’t bring the script to us and we develop it for you and send you on your way.

Most for the most part, we’ll commission new scripts and then, you know, the, the, the bulk of the efforts are about developing those new scripts. So to answer your question, it depends on what is the entry point for the, for the project. In some cases, it’ll be, we’re interested in this story.

So for instance, Ashley Corcoran, who’s the artistic director, who, who took over basically the same year that I came on as head of new works, she’s, she was keen for a long time on a new feminist adaptation of Serenata Bergerac. So she had that in her brain. And I was like, you know, you say adaptation, you’re speaking my language.

So we were all, we were kind of like having that on the back burner, looking for how to do that. And we said, I think this is about inviting a playwright to write that adaptation for us. So we approached Christian Quintana and she wrote a play called Someone Like You.

And in, in terms of Redbone Coonhound, it was Amy and Omari who came to us and said, you know, we got this, we got this script, you know, is this of interest to you? And they just had a treatment at the time, like two or three scenes. And we said, yeah, this looks great.

Let’s commission this. And in some cases we’ve had playwrights or, you know, we had an agent, a playwright’s agent come to us and say, would you like to commission this playwright to, to write this thing? And, you know, it, so there’s, there’s different ways of, of getting to, to a commission, but we try our best to, to treat the processes like one size fits one, because some playwrights write really fast and some take a very long time and we, we try to go as best we can to go, that’s, that’s fine.

Like, what do you need? And here are some poles around which we can pivot the process and say, we can do a stage reading here if you want, you know, if it’s someone who doesn’t live in Vancouver and say, we’ll bring you into town on this date. If you want to aim for a draft for them, great.

If not, then we can figure something out. So it’s a lot of process design a little bit with the goal of eventually getting to the place of going of producing it on the stage. That’s always the goal.

It’s not always the case because things change and sometimes playwrights end up writing plays that, you know, they get partway and they go, I don’t want to write this play anymore. I want to write something else. And then we have things in place to, to say, okay, let’s do that.

Or, you know what, that’s not what we wanted. So let’s part ways or whatever. But it’s always with the intention of, of producing.

So we try, we try to develop with, with the support in mind that will make, allow them to succeed on one of our stages. So that they’re not writing a play for, for someone’s living room, for instance. Or they’re not writing a play for, you know, the, the Royal Albert Hall or whatever.

So they try to present those, those frameworks as, as, as a way to, to articulate goals. Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
I am curious because I know that you grew up in Newfoundland and you’ve, you’ve ended up in Vancouver. So what is the trajectory that took you from Newfoundland to Vancouver and led you to where you are now?

[Stephen Drover]
Well, I, I, I, I, after doing a bachelor’s degree in theatre in Vancouver, I, I, I, at that point I had a professor who, who was, he was the first person to say, you might have some directing sensibilities in you, which I don’t think it was him saying, I think you’re talented. I think it was just like, you’re not in the play when I’m trying to direct you. Like you, your brain is somewhere else.

So it was, it was a half a backhanded comment, but also a challenge. And his name was Ken Livingston. He’s unfortunately passed away, but he was the first graduate of the MFA program at UBC way back, like in the sixties, I think.

And I knew that I wanted to do a master’s degree in directing. And I looked at the, the small sampling of, of universities across Canada that offered it. And at the time I, I, he put UBC in my brain.

And then when I looked into it, I discovered that a professor here, Neil Freeman, who also sadly has passed, was doing a lot of interesting work with, with Shakespeare text. And I read Neil’s books and I got really into, into his approach. So largely I came here for that and Neil and I became friends, he became my mentor.

And then when it was all done, you know, you spend two years doing some graduate work in a, in a, in a community, you get to know the community a little bit and you kind of make some connection. So I just kind of ended up staying around, like kind of Vancouver kind of chose me. It wasn’t like when I was done, I’m like, okay, where do I go now?

I thought, well, I’ve already got some things lined up, so I’ll just stay. And that was, you know, 25 years ago now. So I just kind of found my way here without, I mean, also, you know, part of me, the stubborn Newfoundlander was like, well, if I’m going to leave, I’m going to leave.

I’m going to go far away. If I’m going to stay in Canada, I suppose I could have gone to Victoria, got a little bit further, but yeah, so that was part of it as well.

[Phil Rickaby]
What was your introduction to theatre? What was it that made you want to pursue that?

[Stephen Drover]
Well, I mean, like I said earlier, I was, I mean, when I, when I finished high school, I entered university with, with the original intention of going into medicine. And I was doing a lot of, I was doing a lot of sciences. I was doing, you know, chemistry and biology and physics and advanced mathematics and all this stuff.

And, uh, and it was fine. I really liked that. And I, I, I have a bit of an empirical brain, so it kind of appealed to that.

But I also have part of my brain’s also got a bit of a bit of a less, a more amorphous shape to it. And my best friend at the time decided a long time ago that he wanted to go into theatre. And so he, that’s what he did.

And he would harass me and say, you know, why don’t you come do this here? It’d be, it’d be great. I don’t know what he was basing that on because I had no history being of any kind of artists and there’s no artists in my family.

And so I think on a, on a moment of weakness, it got me very drunk. And I kind of, my, my decision to, to, to, to enter theatre into my life started with the prophetic words of fuck it. That’s the truth.

So I started with, uh, very irresponsible and, uh, and selfish reasons, but that’s how I started. But I, I think there was no thunderbolt. There was no single moment where I went, Oh my God, this is amazing.

Or, you know, there wasn’t a production that I saw that changed my life or anything like that. It was much more of a, a very, very slow burn where I just kind of woke up one day and realized I’m, I’m doing, I’m doing this thing. It wasn’t like, I’m going to decide there was no decision.

I wish there was, it would make a good story, but it was, it was kind of like, and I used this metaphor a while ago that in another conversation, it was like falling in love where you just kind of like, you know, some people are hit by black, you know, by Cupid’s arrow, whatever. And some people it’s, it’s a long bring, you fall in love over a long time. And that’s what it was like for me.

I just kind of ended up here somehow. Um, and I didn’t fight it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Now you have a nerve, a neurodivergent brain. How does your neurodivergence inform the work that you do?

[Stephen Drover]
Yeah, I, I have, uh, I have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. So, uh, you know, in the neurodivergent community that we call that ADHD and that’s not a, that’s not a standalone condition, but it more as a shorthand for representing the overlap between those two neurological profiles and what happens in that, you know, if you think about autism and ADHD in a, in a Venn diagram and the overlap and what happens in that place. And this is, I was diagnosed late in life.

So it’s something I’m still getting to know how my brain behaves and how it thinks and what it needs. But since, since understanding this, this profile that I’ve, I’ve had apparently my whole life, uh, but only recently been named a lot of things are becoming clear for me. Like for instance, I know that my, my autistic brain craves repetition.

It craves scheduling. It craves structure. It craves regularity.

My ADHD brain craves novelty. It craves adventure. It, it, it craves chaos to some degree.

And so I found that theatre’s ironically the ideal place for that overlap because for instance, uh, you know, there’s always a new show. You spend two months on a show and then there’s something new, but that something new has like we rehearsed 10 to six and here’s the production schedule and here’s the cue sheet and it’s very structured. But within that structure, there’s room for, for, for free forming a little bit.

So it, for me, it appeals to the need for structure, but also the need for, for freedom. And Shakespeare particularly does that because it’s so, you know, you talk about if there’s any kind of writing that has math attached to it, not just iambic pentameter, but also like the five X structure, which we find in every scene, every speech ever, almost sometimes every line or like the rule of threes or like all these, like, I’m not a numerologist, but I do find the recognizing pattern in work very satisfying.

So that’s kind of my autism brain. But then the ADHD brain says, this is the, this is the shape of that container and we can fill it with a variety of things. One of my favorite scholars, Emma Smith says Shakespeare’s greatest talent is his sheer premise of gappiness.

That he includes these things in the play that, that don’t have, that don’t, you know, dots that don’t connect. And he invites us to fill ourselves into those, those gaps. And I find that very satisfying, but I know that those gaps are defined by clear, you know, clear outside walls.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying that the, the combination of, of structure and freedom really kind of, I think anyway, appeals to the kind of brain that I was born with. And it’s, it’s, it’s proven to be this, you know, the one area of my life that I don’t have to go, I don’t have to talk to my therapist about. When it comes to work, I’m all good.

I’m good. It’s like everything else, like, you know, yeah, I need some help with, but.

[Phil Rickaby]
Just as we, as we draw to a close, I want to return to Macbeth just for one second. And I’m curious about, is there something that you have learned about the play in rehearsal that was unexpected for you?

[Stephen Drover]
Oh, that’s a good question. There’s something about the play that I’ve learned in rehearsal that was unexpected on so many different little things. I, I, I, I’m all, every day I go, I walk, I come home and I say to my wife, oh, this fucking play, which you’ve done this, well, you know, this, why are you so surprised?

You know? So I, I, you think you have, you think you have a play’s number and then you work on it and you go, God, it’s just elusive. And it’s just a bit, it’s a, it really does mess with your mind in a way that, that is consistently surprising because I think it, and again, if we embrace this idea of it being a permissive container and allowing ourselves to, to find ourselves in it, rather than try to become what it needs us to become, that you’ll, you’ll invariably in the process, see parts of yourself that you didn’t know were there maybe. And you go, oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that I found that, that thing about life upsetting, or I, you know, I, I, I, you know, there’s all, there’s a big thing in Macbeth about the, the child that they once had and the child is, is died.

And which is a big question mark in the play is like, how does grief play into their motivation? And, you know, and he even says stories, you know, bring forth men, children only. So ostensibly they could have more children.

So I find, I find that the, the, the presence of, of children in a narrative that’s so bleak and, and, and kind of horrible and violent a, a, a, a friction that, that triggers me in a way that I didn’t expect to. Now, since directing it 20 years ago, now I’ve had two children. So, you know, that’s part of it as well.

I go, oh, I didn’t think that doing this play that I know so well would, would trigger sensitivities about, about, about kids. So that’s something that I’ve, I’ve found interesting and not something to, to, to shy away from, but just to clock that, that there’s how, how we receive information changes because we change.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, there are kids in Macbeth and they don’t fare so well. So it’s not, it’s definitely something that like, not only have, have Macbeth and his wife lost a child, but there are other kids that don’t have a great ending in this, in this show and somebody else loses their children.

It’s, it’s actually a, it can be a theme of the play.

[Stephen Drover]
It is. Yeah, no, totally. I totally agree with you that, that it is a recurring thing and we’re, we’re built to think that the same thing’s going to happen to Flance who, you know, manages to escape.

Play drops that thread and doesn’t pick it up later. And we go, oh, that kid’s still out there somewhere, which is another thing about the play that, you know, we don’t need him anymore. So he’s gone.

But there’s a scene where Macduff’s wife and children are, are, are killed or slaughtered. And, um, I, I, I thought, you know, I don’t want to see that on stage. I don’t think it’s going to help the narrative.

I think we’d have a hard time getting folks back to the story after doing any kind of representation of that. So I said to, uh, the sound designer, MJ Coomer, who’s a frequent collaborator, I said, can you create a soundscape of a woman and her children being, you know, murdered and butchered? And MJ said, okay.

And they went away and came back with something and played it for a minute and said, that’s perfect. I don’t ever want to hear it again. Or at least like, let’s wait till cue to cue.

I don’t, I don’t think we need to, to fine tune it because it’s, uh, it, it’s doing the job, which is, is, that’s another surprising thing too, that I, I I’m surprised because I knew this because the play is full of murder. It’s full of terrible, terrible, terrible things. And I was, I’ve, I’ve been reminded how we, we whitewash that in the theatre and kind of like make it sanitized and, and that the, the fights are, are driven by honor and nobility and, and are clean.

And, you know, I run you through, sir. And the sword goes under my arm and, you know, I have a noble death and it’s very clean and, but that’s not the play. The play is incredibly brutal and inelegant and messy and very bloody.

I’m bringing lots of blood into this production, physical, like lots of sticky blood, um, which makes me very unpopular with the stage crew, but I hope everyone else likes it. But like you go, you eventually go, well, that’s the play. Why are we doing this play?

If we’re not going to do the play, like if you’re going to do Titus Andronicus, you got to own some, some stuff. You got to go, well, this is where we’re going or don’t do it. Um, or, or, or find ways for the audience to receive it in a way that is, is going to be meaningful.

Uh, and not just affirmative and say, yes, everything you know about Macbeth is correct. And this production will affirm it and go home and, and feel good about, you know, what, what you already knew. So, uh, it challenged me a little bit and I hope that folks go, oh, wow, that’s, that’s something else.

Or at least not that’s something else, but the play is something else. Uh, yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, it is, it is definitely, I mean, I find it difficult to think of the play as anything other than like everyone’s, everyone’s anger, hatred, and revenge, uh, coming together because that’s the, what people are, especially near the end, they’re fighting for things that happened, especially like tough they’re, they’re fighting for their own revenges and avenges and it becomes very personal.

[Stephen Drover]
And yes, that is, that another show that I’ve directed was a wonderful, wonderful play. But at the end of that, the hero that emerges ostensibly Richmond, you know, this like plug and play hero, another one that Shakespeare like doesn’t, he doesn’t allow us to get to know. And he kind of comes in and saves the day and then steps away.

You know, he, he, he’s doing it for the country and for England and for the law, you know, for the monarchy, whatever McDuff’s just doing it because it, because Macbeth killed his family. Yeah. I mean, you know, it originally is like, this is for Scotland, but it turns into a revenge story and it, that’s a, that’s a cold-blooded place to come from.

So trying to honor that without being, without being too iconoclastic about it with a, without being gratuitous and without just doing gore for the sake of doing gore, like I did that in my twenties. Uh, so it’s now it’s about what’s the line that’s, that fulfills what the play’s asking us to do and being honest about that.

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, Steven Drover, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate giving me some time and talking about Macbeth and so many other things. Thanks for, thanks for joining me on the program.

[Stephen Drover]
Oh, my pleasure. Anytime. Thanks so much.

[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I really appreciate you listening this far. If you’re watching on YouTube, please make sure that you hit the like button, leave a comment so that I know that you were here and hit the subscribe button and that bell icon so that whenever I put out a new episode, you’ll get notified that a new episode is available.

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And I know the cost of living has gotten higher for everyone, but it was becoming untenable for me. And thankfully, my patrons were able to step up and help me to cover the cost of this of creating this show. And I love doing this show.

And I am so grateful to my patrons for helping me to make this podcast. If you would like to help me to make this podcast, if you enjoy this podcast, and you want to be part of it, please consider becoming a patron, go to patreon.com/ stageworthy and join up. patrons get early access to episodes conversations about interesting things about Canadian theatre. And the more people who join the Patreon, the more I will be able to offer to my patrons.

So please join, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Taylor Trowbridge. Taylor is the playwright and performer behind the fringe show Dads.

And so we’re going to talk about that we’re going to talk about Dads. She’s going to ask me a couple of questions about my dad because they were her show is about dads. And just generally we’re going to learn about that show.

And I really think it’s going to be an exciting one of the Toronto Fringe Festival this year. So tune in next week for my conversation with Taylor Trowbridge.