Taylor Trowbridge is bringing DADS to Toronto Fringe
About This Episode:
What do we really know about our dads — and what have we never been able to say out loud? Taylor Trowbridge joins Phil to talk about her new solo show Dads, playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Part stand-up, part storytelling, part audience game, the show invites people to sit with the full range of their experiences with their fathers: the funny, the complicated, and the quietly unresolved.
Taylor and Phil dig into the generational forces that shaped so many dads — wartime trauma, boomer expectations, the rigid masculinity that made emotional connection difficult — and how those patterns echo forward into all of us. Taylor also shares how her brother Dylan is directing the show, why the family collaboration just makes sense, and what it was like to turn questions about her own dad into a piece of theatre.
This episode explores:
- What Dads is — and why Taylor wanted to build a show around audience interaction, games, and stand-up
- The generational and emotional weight fathers carry, and how masculinity shapes the father-child relationship
- Working with her brother Dylan Trowbridge as director, and why no chemistry test was needed
- Tool for Rebellion: Taylor’s verbatim theatre piece on incel culture, the Toronto van attack, and the limits of empathy
- And much more!
Guest: 🎭 Taylor Trowbridge
Taylor Trowbridge (she/her) is an actor, educator, and award-wining playwright. As an actor, she has performed for theatre companies such as Canadian Stage, The Shaw Festival, Nightwood Theatre, Bard on the Beach and SummerWorks Festival, and for TV shows such as The Handmaid’s Tale, Upload, SKYMED, Orphan Black, Murdoch Mysteries and Copper.
Taylor’s documentary play Tool for Rebellion was part of Studio 180’s IN DEVELOPMENT program in 2022 and 2023 and received the Equity Showcase Cayle Chernin Award for Theatre. Her new play DADS – a playful, interactive solo show – will be at Toronto Fringe from June 30th to July 12th.
Get Tickets to DADS: http://fringetoronto.com/fringe/show/dads
Connect with Taylor:
📸 Instagram: @taylorbluetrowbridge
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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 kinds, from actors to directors to playwrights, stage managers.
If they make 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. This is an extra episode this week.
I am trying to fit in as many shows as possible into my release schedule. So I’m doing extra episodes for the month of June as we head into July for Toronto Fringe, and this is the first of those episodes. So look for those this month outside of the regular cadence.
So for the month of June, you’ll be seeing episodes on Tuesday and Thursday. So in this episode, my guest is Taylor Trowbridge. Taylor is an actor, an educator, an award-winning playwright, and she joined me to talk about her play, Dads, which is appearing at Toronto Fringe Festival.
She is both the writer and the performer of this show. We talk a lot about dads and sometimes the strange relationship that people have with their dads. She’s going to ask me some questions about my dad, and she’s going to talk about her dad.
So I really enjoyed this conversation, and I know you will too. So here’s my conversation with Taylor Trowbridge. Taylor Trowbridge, thank you so much for joining me.
I really appreciate it. We are now getting into Fringe season, and it is time to start talking about shows. You have a show in the Toronto Fringe called Dads.
What is the elevator pitch for your show?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
So Dads integrates audience interaction and some games and storytelling and stand-up comedy, just exploring the wide variety of experiences that everyone has with their dad, whether their dad was in their life, in their life too much, in their life, but they didn’t feel a connection with them. Whatever their experience is, I’m trying to make space for that and make it feel playful and honest, and also just exploring the idea of can you be honest and still honoring at the same time.
[Phil Rickaby]
What was it that made you want to create a show around dads?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, for me, I just always had this like sensitive relationship with my dad where it’s got a lot of good and a lot of challenges. And in speaking with other people about their dads, there is always something that cracked a person open, whether they have a really close relationship with their dad, or if their dad genuinely just wasn’t around. It just seems like it offered unexpected insight into their lives, and it just got to kind of a bit of a risky, scary place in a way that I like.
Something that feels vulnerable for people to share, but also it’s a great kind of opportunity to laugh at some of the challenges or just dad-isms that we’ve experienced.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, there are certain things that seem to be at least considered universal. The dad joke seems to be a thing.
It’s like somebody becomes a father, and automatically there’s something like telling them every dad joke they can. And that I think is one of the more fun quirks of dads in our social vision, for want of a better word. Are there other things that you’re exploring in the show that are sort of like the quintessential dad-isms?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Ooh, interesting. Well, it’s hard to say because my dad is very much not the handyman type. So there’s a lot of traditional dad-isms that my dad does not embody, but that’s where I bring in a different stand-up to do 10 minutes on their dad each show.
And I think just the comedy of getting into ways that our dads can kill us or just be haphazard in how they’re guessing how to be a dad or the ways that you disappoint your dad. I think there’s a lot of tension with dads. And so that’s maybe a dad-ism that is fairly universal for some, where there’s the feeling of, am I living up to what he wants?
Is he living up to what I want?
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, those are big questions. And I think a lot of times in a lot of people’s lives, their father did not have the opportunity to be nurturing. Like as a, you know, a lot of times somebody comes, the parents come home, they have a new baby, that baby is physically attached to the mother for much of their time.
And sometimes the dad can feel like, oh, okay, I’m not involved here. I can do a couple of things, but I’m not, this child is not with me. And that can cause sort of a separation.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah. It’s like biological, also generational. Like in terms of my dad, he’s very much of the generation that was like, you are the provider and go work.
And then you come home and you’re exhausted at the end of the day, just hope that you can relax because you’re getting ready to do it the next day. I mean, all of that’s changing. And it’s interesting to see how we reconcile, you know, what was a generational difference then now when people my age are becoming parents themselves and all that sort of stuff too.
Yeah. And also just masculinity in general, like how nurturing men are encouraged to be has changed so much since my dad’s generation. So that’s another thing to think about too, is like they see the change happening, but it’s harder to actually make the leap into asking your kid how they’re doing or saying I love you or any of those sorts of things.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I think it’s there were generations of parents, like I think of, you know, my parents were boomer parents and boomers boomers were were raised by a generation of parents who were traumatized from the war, who were raised by a generation of parents who were traumatized by the war. And it causes a certain difficulty with with emotion, often in fathers, in men, which they then pass down to their children who have to figure out how to undo and unpack that.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Absolutely. Yeah. That like inherited double decker generation of wartime families and stuff and just like conditioning men to be soldiers and not show emotion and all that sort of stuff like that still existed, even though my dad, he was in Canada, not in the States, obviously, the States, Vietnam, they had to be going off to war.
And but my dad didn’t have to partake in being a soldier, but he still grew up within the framework that made soldiers and stuff like that. So, yeah, I mean, boomer generation is a really interesting combination of like and my my dad kind of captures that, too, of the freedom and rock and roll of like the hippie type stuff and then the yuppie money making hungry to achieve, achieve, achieve. And they had so many opportunities given to them as well as the circumstances were much better to own a home and all that sort of stuff.
So it’s kind of an interesting generation of like exciting people who I don’t I don’t want to make a statement about whole generation, actually, I’m realizing, but exciting people who love freedom, but also are kind of maybe more supportive of a money making mindset than our generation is, I would say.
[Phil Rickaby]
One of the things that I think that’s interesting, I think it sort of gets to what you’re saying is that they were of a generation that was still carrying the the the the here are the responsibilities of an adult that they were taught as children. But when they were young, when they were youth, when they were in college, it was like we’re having fun, we’re doing all the things. And then when they became adults, they were like, and now I put away childish things never to look back on those.
And they fill themselves into those roles and maybe occasionally look wistfully back at the things that they used to enjoy. But yes, it becomes like, oh, well, I’m a grown up now, so I can’t do that anymore.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Totally. Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting.
My dad had kids super young, like he met my mom at Brock University, and they they got engaged after two months of dating and married after two more months. So four months into dating, they were married. And then a year, a little over a year later, they started to have their first kid.
And I’m their fourth. And yeah, like, you know, my dad was 22 when he got married. And to think of that shift of being like, oh, my gosh, I’m a money maker, I have to support a family of four.
It was a really like severe gear shift. And he he you know, he did it. And then he would let loose like in other ways himself.
He kind of like held both sides, but definitely became like an adult, quote unquote, early in life compared to our generation, I would say.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s so weird to think about becoming a parent in your early 20s. No, I’m Gen X. So it’s like there’s some people in my generation who fell into that as well.
But I would say there’s a lot of people who didn’t. To me, the idea of like being in my 20s, like thinking back on my 20s and thinking that child as a parent, no way.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
It’s wild. It feels almost like a teenager, like at that age. It’s just so young.
And my mom was, you know, a teenager. Well, she was 19 when she got married and 20 when she got her first kid. And yeah, and that plays through, too.
I think I don’t know for other people who had parents who got married young, but they always kept sort of like the they would interact like teenage like they fought like teenagers, I guess is what I’m trying to say. There was a lot of like growing up together and also staying sort of like locked in time together in an interesting way.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, that absolutely could happen. There are certainly certainly new people whose parents fought like teenagers.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Oh, yeah, for sure. But yeah, I can’t imagine. I don’t have children myself, but yeah, I would not have been prepared in my 20s at all to have to have children, let alone four.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m thinking about, you know, the fact, you know, they say that you don’t you don’t your brain doesn’t mature until you’re at least twenty five.
So you are a teenager through those years. You’re making teenage decisions and yet having to behave as an adult. It’s the wildest thing.
Wild. Your play is being it’s a family affair because your brother, your brother is is your director.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yes. Yeah. I was so excited.
My brother, Dylan Chobridge, he directs in Toronto. He just directed Cock, which did like a tour of the world, which was very exciting. They had great reviews in London.
I never got to see the production because I was out of town. But yeah, I’ve heard such great things. And so I had I got into fringe and then he was really excited and I was just sort of writing being like, who do you think?
Who do you think? Like, could you possibly like, oh, I don’t know if I can fit it in. And then one day I was just like, OK, yeah.
Who would you imagine? He’s like me. It’s really and I was like, yes, just because no one can understand our own dad better.
He also just has such a similar appetite for risk and connection and like playfulness in theatre. So I’m really excited to get to work with him.
[Phil Rickaby]
Have you have you worked with Dylan before?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
When I did, I wrote a play called Tool for Rebellion that was this verbatim theatre piece, and he read it and would like chime in here and there about it. But I worked more formally with like Mark Grinder in Studio 180 Theatre. But he we already developed sort of a creative relationship there.
But yeah, he’s been like dramaturging this piece and obviously he’s going to be directing it. So all of that just feels so right. And it’s there’s just no chemistry test necessary because it has already existed for so many years.
So.
[Phil Rickaby]
Sure. Do you do you have an agreement or a framework for. Disagreements.
Listen, I my nobody can nobody can fight like your siblings, right? Yeah, totally. You you can love the shit out of your siblings, but nobody can fight like your siblings.
So do you do you have an agreement or a framework?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
That’s so interesting. Good question. Not yet.
It’s funny, Dylan is like my big brother, and I’ve always just like really looked up to him. And so I don’t. And he really he’s a really gracious, I guess, dramaturge slash director.
So he really, I think, cares if I have an opinion that’s contradictory to his. There’s been some moments in the dramaturgy where maybe he’ll mention something and I’m like, oh, I think it’s actually more this. He’s like, oh, I’m excited by that.
And that delights me. And that’s kind of been the way it’s worked between the both of us where he might challenge me on something. And I’m like, oh, yeah, I love it.
So so far, maybe because we’re still early ish in our collaboration so far, it’s been it’s been working. Yeah, I it’s nice to have someone that you trust if they question something, you know, and I do. So I would think it over if he if he had something that really contradicted what I felt, I would probably think it over for like a week and then we reconvene and find something in between, probably.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. But it sounds like because you have like that, that respect and that, you know, that that history of working together, at least as dramaturgically. And I think those things would have revealed themselves by now.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
I think so, too. I hope so, too. He and I actually, you know, I’ve got like I’m the fourth child and I’m close with all my siblings.
But Dylan and I in particular very rarely ever fight. I don’t know if it’s because of the age difference or. Yeah, it’s like I’m not sure what it is, but we’ve always gotten along really well.
And and yeah, I guess because I think I just he was like the valedictorian in high school and all these things. So I just always look up to him and just think, you know, that he I trust him, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned Tool for Rebellion, and I think we should talk about that. And it’s a verbatim piece about incel culture and the Toronto van attack, which sounds even more relevant today than it did when the van attack happened, given the the continuing to feed that misogyny and and that incel ideology.
When the Toronto van attack happened, did you did you feel immediately that there was something you needed to do what it needed to do in the theatre to address it?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
I think that came over time. I just remember I remember where I was. I was in Trinity Bellwoods Park actually when it when it happened, when the news broke and I was just reading about it on my phone, waiting for a and I found for the next 24 hours, I just kept being like, what is going on?
What is going on? It was the first I ever heard of incels. And I think that may be the case for many of that whole idea.
But it was, you know, just a few months after the Me Too thing. And so in the wake of Me Too, it felt like things got worse. Like I remember noticing like being cat called more often or, you know, even interactions with friends of mine and things like that, where I’m like, oh, my gosh, somehow it’s it’s a pushback almost to the pushback that happened with Me Too.
And I was just kind of sitting in the crossroads of all of that in that moment. And I think it was it was a subject matter I was very interested in. I watched, eventually watched the interrogation, because I just was like, how can this be?
I want to know more. And then it actually wasn’t until 2020. When Ghost Light, my brother started Ghost Light with a few other folks.
And they had a class with Andrew Kushner about verbatim theatre. And so I took it. It’s this online class.
And, and that was the, that’s where I started thinking, oh, this would be a subject I’d like to do it on. And so just because we had, you know, little assignments throughout the weeks, then I started piecing together, like, edited scenes from the interrogation and then interviews with like a shame expert and interviews with like, men who work with boys on masculinity and that sort of stuff. And it sort of took off from there.
So Ghost Light actually and Andrew Kushner, that class with Andrew Kushner really like propelled that piece into being done.
[Phil Rickaby]
Given the explosion of the Manosphere, which builds on and co-ops and continues the incel bullshit. Have you ever thought about revisiting that particular play? Because that incident is such a massive, like, oh, this is where this kind of thing can lead.
And maybe we should be reminded of that.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Definitely. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s so important.
And like, however much I think there can be kind of an accusatory stance, one can take on it. The play attempts to be empathetic in some way to the cycles of what could have led to that sort of culture taking root. And so yeah, I worked with, I got a recommender’s grant with Studio 180.
And that really helped me finish the whole piece. And then Mark McGrinder directed it as a reading in their in development program. And that helped so much.
And so yeah, it’s kind of like, they’re almost ready to go completely. It’s just a matter of finding the right place for it. But I definitely am fascinated to try to continue more with it.
And there’s actually, as part of this piece, I kind of tracked down an incel and spoke with them, just with no screens on and just, they were in America. And that guy, I’m still in contact with, and he actually spoke to, there’s an incel podcast, I can’t remember her name, I can’t remember, that like this incel podcast that this woman spent so much time like trying to get to the core of the problem. And he went on that podcast, just speaking about like the positive effects of actually seeing his own experience reflected back to him.
So maybe I should integrate some of that into the piece, I have no idea. But I definitely would love to do more with it. Yeah, because I had two readings, but I haven’t been able to stage it yet.
And I think it would be really, I would just really love to do that. Yeah, it’d be fun.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. The play is described as exploring the limits of empathy. Where did you find those limits for yourself in making it?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I think I feared being too empathetic, because obviously, the culture is so violent in its thinking, and at times its actions. And I wholeheartedly disagree with it.
But I feel like maligning the culture only, or just not coming close to these people or speaking to them, just makes the problem worse and creates a deeper echo chamber for those people, because they’re not finding connection in an outside way. So I think the limit actually might be with the van attack, honestly, when I think about it. And that kind of comes up in the play, because I keep revisiting the interrogation scenes.
And at the end, the officer essentially gives the driver, I don’t usually say his name, an opportunity to have remorse. And in the interrogation I’ve seen, he just doesn’t, he just sort of shrugs. And that for me is like, that’s my limit to empathy, I would say.
But as a problem, a systemic problem as a whole, and a question around masculinity and having empathy for young boys who are told, don’t cry, don’t show emotion, and show your stature by getting girls, that stuff still exists so much. And I feel I’m a part of it in some ways, and I understand it’s like a societal thing. So that’s where I have empathy.
It’s just, I guess, when it gets down to the nitty gritty of some of those horrible attacks that have existed over the years.
[Phil Rickaby]
For sure. I mean, until we get to the point where young boys are not told that they shouldn’t cry, it’s a problem that we’re going to keep having to combat and wrestle with. Because that whole stereotype of like, here’s what it means to be a man, it just, I was reading, you can sort of see how this can fall in, like lead to the incel lifestyle.
The idea that the only acceptable emotions for men are anger and victorious joy. And outside of that, you cannot be sad, you cannot just be happy. These are the only acceptable things, which is so narrow and limiting, that you could see how somebody who falls into the pressure and the stereotype of what it means to be a man can put themselves into a spot.
It’s the patriarchy that we have to dismantle so that men can actually be permitted to feel things.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, it’s like, liberate men from the patriarchy. And then there’s a lot of talk about women under the patriarchy and how they’ve suffered. But I guess a lot of what that play is, is looking at men in the patriarchy and feeling empathy for what that must be like.
Because however progressive we are, it still exists so much. And like you’re saying, in the mammoth sphere, there’s these massive pockets of really aggressive, regressive masculinity that can really take hold of people, especially boys who are 10 to 18, who are looking for identity and feel like they’re a man because they hit these check marks or whatever.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. You can really go down a hole on the whole topic. And I don’t want to make this about that because we’re talking about a newer show.
But it’s such a topic that you can really sort of dig into.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, there are some parallels to I suppose, in terms of it’s funny, like I just made this show and in the middle of making it was like, oh, yeah, like masculinity is coming up again. How interesting.
Because in some way, I mean, the dad’s experience for people, it’s there’s like really amazing dads out there. And then there’s like, you know, maybe less amazing dads who did their best. And then there’s some horrible dads and everything.
But it’s kind of funny, like the dad you grew up with is sort of the patriarchy you grew up with in a microcosm sort of way. So there is some some through line between the two shows, I suppose.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Dad that your dad models masculinity for you. And so whatever that is, that’s what you grew up thinking is is is a man.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, absolutely. And like I can’t imagine what that must be like as a boy growing up. I see it as a girl and I can think, oh, I can be all sorts of things.
I don’t have to be like my dad. But yeah, when it comes to emotions or making money or, you know, how to just have stature and all that sort of stuff, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a boy.
[Phil Rickaby]
No, in terms of like creating dads, this play, because it is interactive and you’re talking to the audience and you have a stand up comedian come in a different way each night, like you were saying. And how did the structure how did this play start to come together for you as a writer?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Oh, yeah. Good question. Well, I get into this a little bit in the show, but I did have a gathering with friends and dads were on my mind.
And I put forward a question to my friends. And that was kind of the birthplace of the show, I think, because I love the variety of answers I was getting from people about their own dads. And so I think from there, I kind of held that on the back of my head.
And then, then just started knowing that I had a lot of stories I wanted to tell. And so I, you know, I had maybe four chunks of stories, and I just pieced those out. And then I thought about the questions I wanted to ask, and how to ask questions in a game format as well that makes it easier for people to participate.
So it sort of felt like these different pieces that then I tried to put together. And I’ve been really loving stand up comedy as well. Like I, I’ve been just taking classes and just interested in it.
I’ve always loved stand up comedy. And same with my dad, he loves it too. And so bringing in a comic to just sort of give a new perspective, a fresh perspective, a bit of a deep dive on a totally different situation, felt like a fun, a fun offering for the audience.
But yeah, I’ve always loved theatre, that like, I don’t know the feeling in class when you’re a kid where they ask the student questions, and it’s an open discussion, and you’re like nine years old, and you’re like, Oh, I have something to say. I just love that high and I love like creating atmospheres where other people get to share their own stories or truths or whatever. So I always knew I wanted to have it about everybody’s dad.
[Phil Rickaby]
As somebody who, you know, you and your dad love stand up comedy. Is that something you ever tried yourself or thought about trying?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, I have. So I took a class on it. And then I’ve done like a few sets.
I feel like I have like a lot of things about my dad actually. But I have like maybe 10 to 15 minutes or something, which I don’t really do in the show. But yeah, it’s been a really fun way, especially if you’re a person who likes doing, like solo shows or interactive shows, like it’s a fun micro medium to get to like, just come up with something, do five minutes on stage, test it out.
It’s very, it’s like a really fast and easy. I mean, it’s not easy, but fast and an accessible way to just test out some writing and see how it goes.
[Phil Rickaby]
I’ll be honest, it is one of the things that terrifies me more than anything else, because I’ll get up and I’ll do a solo show. That’s no problem. I mean, I’d be nervous about it, but jokes on a stage for five minutes, that’s too much.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Well, a lot of it can just be storytelling, though, too. And then you mine all the like new little micro jokes in there. Yeah.
Would you ever try it?
[Phil Rickaby]
Oh, I don’t know. I think a long time ago, I thought about it. Yeah.
But in terms of there’s such a different mindset, like because you’re getting up to be funny. I find in playwriting and in plays, if you’re concentrating on the character and the story and all sorts of things, comedy will come.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
But the idea of getting up and the purpose is to be funny. It is very difficult to do that. Right.
It’s like when you’re doing a show and you’re like, now we get to the part of the show that is jokes and nobody laughs.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s like a pressure that you have to.
It’s like when you’re flying in a plane and you just have to tune out in your brain that you’re in a plane in the air and somehow the mechanism is keeping you up there. Like you just think, oh, I want to experiment with this or something. I don’t know, because definitely I’ve had times where it was not good.
Other times where it was good. The audiences really vary and and how you hit it really varies. But it’s been a fun way to be creative that doesn’t rely on getting a venue in the same way with theatre and all that sort of stuff.
Like it’s just a sort of. Yeah, like a semi accessible way to be creative.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I’ll just say, you know, the fabulous Mrs. Maisel made it look so easy.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Oh, yeah. She’s like, I’m going through some stuff. I’m going to go talk about it.
[Phil Rickaby]
She just got up on stage. It was fully formed. You know, if you had a good writer, I suppose that’s that’s how you do it.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
But yeah, for sure. I mean, also, Tignatera, like it’s interesting because it’s kind of similar where, well, obviously one’s fake, one’s real. But where Tignatera went into that set right after learning that she was diagnosed with cancer, I guess, and unplanned.
But the stuff, because it was so raw and real, there was humor there. And that that can be an interesting. I like stand up comedy as an art form, as an audience member and also as a person, an amateur who is dabbling.
I like it for the ability to basically say anything. Some of the hardest stuff you could ever say and people can hold it in some way or another. I’m not talking about like highly offensive stuff.
I’m mostly talking about like, you know, challenging life experiences. And it’s just sort of an oddly up for it audience.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I mean, that Tignatera bit, I mean, that’s the wrong word for it. But that that set, which I listened to very shortly after it came out, it was the rawness and it was it was the way that TIG frames things.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
You know, TIG has a very distinct outlook, which I understand that’s one of the necessary things of being a stand up comedian. It could be a little off beat. So so when TIG comes out and she starts talking about her cancer, it takes the audience aback.
But because she has presence and she has an outlook, it’s riveting.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Totally.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. What I want to I actually want to talk about the game show aspect of of Dad, because what what was it that that that made you want to I mean, interactivity is is can be super it can be fraught for an audience. Sometimes people don’t want to be involved.
But what what made you want to do a game show for this play?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Well, I like when you’re saying game show, because I haven’t thought about in game show way yet, but maybe I should. But I do play games. And I guess where that was born from was games when I teach acting and games, warm up games that are about like sharing parts of yourself, but in a way that doesn’t you don’t actually have to verbalize anything.
And so I wanted to bring in something like that, where so essentially, I will like make a statement about dads in general, like, you know, my dad is shy, or my dad’s. My dad loves the good deal and hates to pay full price, just little details. And if they, if that’s their experience with their dad, they can put their hand up.
And so the audience, the shows in the round, all the shows that video cabaret this year in the round. And so everybody can just see in the space who they relate to. And people with their hand down, even in there’s a way to relate to the people who don’t have their hand up as well.
So that’s kind of like a lot of the game is that that sort of revisiting that as a means to share sort of silly things about her dad, but also heavier things that are hard to say with words, I guess.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, yeah. Funny, you were talking about, you know, some dad things and earlier were mentioning about how your dad was not particularly handy. Yeah.
And I immediately was like, neither was mine. My dad had a toolbox, it didn’t get used. Only under only under extreme duress.
Like there was like, if there was no other option, that toolbox came out, but it was kind of and unused. So.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Right, right. Totally. Well, do you would you be cool with me asking you one or two questions about your dad?
[Phil Rickaby]
100 percent.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
OK, great. So, well, this is kind of an odd question. I don’t know.
You might have to think about it. But one question I ask is, what is your earliest memory of your dad? And then do you feel like it captures him in some way?
[Phil Rickaby]
Earliest memory of my dad, the first thing that comes to mind is. The funny thing is that a lot of them, when I think about my dad, a lot of the memories go with my brother or my sister as well. And because my brother, my sister are both adopted.
And so it comes into like choosing them as as as as kids to become siblings. But I think one of the earliest memories of my dad is actually a jacket he had. Yeah, he had a coat.
We called it Russell. Because it made noise when you moved, it made a lot of noise when you moved. And so the the jacket was called Russell.
And I came across a picture of that jacket a while ago. And I was like, oh, that’s dad in Russell.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Does that capture him in any way? Like, I don’t actually ask that in the show, but I’m just curious, because my earliest memory, my dad does kind of capture him in some way.
[Phil Rickaby]
I don’t think it does. It’s funny. I don’t think that that that that certainly doesn’t capture the man I know now.
Right. And it doesn’t even really capture the the the the the man that that that raised me. Oh, but it’s hard to it is hard to put those things together because.
My father’s a completely different person today than he was then.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting when we’re kids, too, it’s a lot of visceral memory when you’re that little. It’s like the scruff of the the like the beard or the jacket and those sorts of things.
It’s like everything is tactile. But yeah, that’s really interesting, actually. And that kind of might lead into my second question for you about how he’s a different man now.
What are two true but contradictory qualities or statements you can make about your dad? Like an example might be my dad was a hypochondriac, but he rarely would go to the doctor. It could be something small or bigger.
[Phil Rickaby]
These are very this is actually a very simple question for me to answer for some very specific reasons. When I was growing up, we would be traveling somewhere and my father would never ask for directions. We would get there.
Whether if there was a map, we might look at the map, but we are not asking for directions. We’re going to find it ourselves. Yeah.
In my 20s, my dad came out of the closet and one of the first aside from, you know, he likes men now. But the other thing that was sort of a dead giveaway was I remember walking through a department store and we couldn’t find a thing. And my father said, oh, we’ll just ask for directions.
And I thought, who the fuck are you?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Wow. That’s amazing. Oh, my gosh.
It’s that’s like that’s one of the best answers I’ve had.
[Phil Rickaby]
You’re welcome.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
That’s incredible.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
And so are you are you close? Would you say you’re close now or is it?
[Phil Rickaby]
I think I mean, the relationship is different when you’re a child, you have one relationship with your with your parents. When you get to be an adult, you have to find and navigate a new one. And we had some rocky times, not because he came out of the closet, but because of some other things.
But I think we’re we’re making it work. Nice. You know, we’re we’re getting we’re getting closer.
I mean, we sometimes we have deep conversations and a lot of times we don’t. Yeah. You know, as one often does with with parents, fathers of our of his generation.
Totally. Totally.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Oh, well, thanks for answering those questions.
[Phil Rickaby]
You’re welcome. You’re welcome. You mentioned that you have you come from you have four siblings.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Mm hmm.
[Phil Rickaby]
We know you’re you’re are you the youngest? Yeah. You’re the youngest.
And Dylan, is he is he where is he in the order with you?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah. So we have my oldest brother, he’s Mark. Dylan is next.
And then my sister, Harmony, and then me. So Dylan’s like the second oldest.
[Phil Rickaby]
The fact that you get along now makes complete sense.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
You know, I know everybody I know who has a sibling like their sibling right next to them is I can’t stand you.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
It’s like my sister Harmony and I are very, very close. But yes, we are less than two years apart. And definitely as kids and that sort of thing, that would have been the sibling that like we would fight, we would play, we would fight, we would play, we would fight.
Yeah, she’s actually going to be doing something. We have a little sound cue of like sort of an atmospheric sound cue. And she’s going to be making something for that because she she’s a singer, songwriter and stuff.
So we’re really making it a healthy affair for real.
[Phil Rickaby]
Nice. Nice. I want to talk about about you in the theatre in a more broad way instead of just talking about this one show, because you do a lot in the theatre.
You have you’ve done a lot of jobs as a as an actor, playwright. You’ve worked with many different theatre companies. How did you first come to find the theatre?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, it’s interesting. I grew up in Vancouver and I loved and did theatre through high school, loved it so much. The atmosphere in Vancouver was at the time was a lot more film and TV.
And so I went to film school here and got a diploma from film school. And then and then Dylan was at Shaw. And I went to see him get married.
My whole family went and we had those like amazing time there. And I became like, oh, my gosh, this is what I want to be in this atmosphere. I want to be in this environment.
So I moved to Toronto shortly after that. And Dylan, like walked me into my first audition for Theatre by the Bay, like, like I was a boxer. He just was like walking behind me like my hype man.
And so I came to Toronto thinking, oh, maybe I’ll stay for a few months. But I booked that job. And then I ended up staying just because there was just so much opportunity in Toronto.
And I’d never been somewhere where theatre was so a part of what was going on. Like I remember looking through Now magazine at the time, it’s gone now, looking through Now magazine and be like, oh, my gosh, like plays are advertised like movies. There’s just page after page of plays to see.
And that was so exciting to me. I’d gone to Circle in the Square for some theatre training. So that was also like, like, helped me get further along there.
And then eventually, many, many years later, I got my master’s in theatre at York University. So that kind of took me on that educator, but also creator tangent, I would say, like, definitely, I didn’t know if I liked teaching or if I could create and then in that place, I learned that I loved both so much. So that was kind of my journey.
Theatre, I love how much like in Toronto, it’s like, you do a theatre job, you do a film job, you do theatre, like, it’s just so wonderful. And the amount that creation is possible in Toronto as well is really exciting.
[Phil Rickaby]
The moving between theatre and film and television is very, very Britain. It’s very much like the UK acting thing. You’re just an actor and you’re working on media.
Whereas I think in the States, it tends to be more segregated.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Totally. And I feel like that’s such a shame in a way, because obviously, they flex different muscle, literally, like in terms of just how it depends on the theatre space, but how you need to carry your voice and all that sort of stuff. But I don’t know, I love both.
And it would be hard to have to give up one or the other, though I think I could if I had that gun to my head. Yeah, it’s such a gift to be able to do both. Both have such strength.
And as an actor in Canada, you kind of like in order to survive, you have to, if you can do both.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, you can’t rely on the theatre to pay the bills.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
[Phil Rickaby]
I want to mention everybody needs a hype person for their auditions. And I think having somebody hype you up as you’re going into your first audition has got to be great because I spent far too many times alone in an audition waiting area, freaking out. The least I could do is like, if I had somebody cheering me on, I would probably have gone better.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
I know it’s one of those memories. It’s just cemented in there where I’m like, I’m so grateful because it could be so intimidating coming to a new city and entering a waiting room. And I mean, he probably entered way more chilly than in my head where he’s my hype man.
But I knew his energy behind me was that. So that was really helpful. And yeah, it’s nice for both of us, like through all the years, like reading for each other for auditions and all that sort of stuff.
It’s been it’s been really nice to have.
[Phil Rickaby]
You’ve worked with a number of theatre companies in various capacities. When you think about Canadian theatre, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
I mean, I have some favourite Canadian theatre makers that like thrilled me through the years. I remember seeing J.D. Derbyshire’s Certified, and I loved that so much. I also read their book, Mercy Gene, just recently, and it was incredible.
I don’t know how much the theatre community knows about that book, but it’s so wonderful. Catherine Gauthier’s Meeting is a play that I love that came to Vancouver, actually, but I don’t know if it’s had like a full staging. It had some at Nightwood when I was working there.
And I was like, wow, it’s just very risky and asked such important questions. Rebecca Northen’s Blind Date is something that I think about. I also saw the Queer Edition and oh my gosh, just the stories that came from that.
I think that was such a huge inspiration for wanting to integrate audience members and how important that can be. And then another play that I remember seeing early days of being in Toronto that, poof, again, asked such risky questions was, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but My Fellow Creatures. Michael Rubenfeld wrote it.
It’s like a three-hander, but really it’s just a two-hander. And I saw it at Theatre Passe-Muraille. Must have been like, I don’t know, 2005, maybe seven or eight.
And it was so gripping. And I guess those plays, a lot of them collect to kind of speak to what I live in theatre, which I guess they’re all Canadian pieces, which is, I guess, like asking questions that are almost hard to ask and that they challenge the audience and doing so with empathy. So yeah, I think like humor, heart, risk, those are things I think of with Canadian theatre, at least the theatre that I’ve loved from Canada.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes we, I mean, we take our theatre very, very seriously in this country. I think sometimes we take it a little too seriously and sometimes we should lighten up about it.
But I think, I’m curious if those works that you mentioned, are they plays that you return to that you go back and read? Or are there different plays that are like the ones that you are like, I read this play all the time?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Oh, that’s a good question. Well, I mean, I would say like Catherine Gauthier’s play Meeting was the one that maybe I’ve revisited over the years, simply because I first learned about it when I was working at Nightwood Theatre and saw it that way. And then years later, saw it, a production of it, and it was so intimate.
And it was so satisfying to see it staged. J.D. Derbyshire’s play Certified, which was at Theatre Centre, maybe in 2019, I think it was. I went looking for that play just recently.
And that’s how I came across their book. But I didn’t, I couldn’t find their play at the library, but I’m sure at the reference library, it’s there. And I would be fascinated.
I mean, Blind Date, that show changes with every show. So it’s like, I want to see it live again. But my fellow creatures, I would love to get my hands on a copy of that, because I just remember being so shook by it.
And, and it’s been so long, it’s probably been like, almost 20 years or something since I’ve encountered it. So I’d really like to again.
[Phil Rickaby]
I always find reading plays so interesting, because you have to learn how to read a play, right? They’re not, they’re not novels. And so you have to do a lot of work to fill in the play if you’re just reading it.
And that is definitely a learned skill. Yeah, that sort of leads into my last question, which is about the conversation that you want the play to start. What do you want people to be talking about when they leave the theatre?
[Taylor Trowbridge]
You know, I mean, maybe they might have questions of their own for each other about each other’s dads or have a story about their dad they want to get into, or something they’ve never really been able to reconcile with their dad and just get into that. I just feel like dads, the subject feels so primal and deep and like, buried sometimes at the same like for many of us. So I hope it just feels like, like a great conversation follows between multiple people about each of their dads, or, you know, how they grew up without a dad and how that formed them in an important way.
Yeah, I just hope it spurs more discussion.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Taylor, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
[Taylor Trowbridge]
Thank you. Thank you so much.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of stageworthy. If you are watching on YouTube, please make sure that you like this episode, leave a comment so that I know that you were here. And if you like stage really hit the subscribe button and hit that bell icon so that whenever a new episode comes out, you will get notified that a new episode is available.
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Because even though a podcast is released for free, and you can listen to it for free, putting it together still costs money and still cost time. It costs money to have a website to have an audio hosting place so that the files can be distributed to all of the podcast listening places, image editing software and video and audio editing software and transcripts. Those are all things that cost money.
And if it was not for my patrons, I would not be able to do this. So if you enjoy stage worthy, and you would like to be part of the show, if you want to help me to make it please go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. If you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see the names of my patrons on the screen right now.
patrons get early access to episodes, we have conversations about interesting things going on in the theatre world. And you know what, the more people who join the Patreon, the more I’d be able to offer my patrons. And in addition to all of that, you get my gratitude because I am truly grateful to all of the people who’ve chosen to back this podcast on Patreon.
So if you would like to be part of that go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Kathleen Welch. Kathleen is one of the leads behind the Spindle Collective.
They are the creator behind the hit show Samca, which played many different incarnations. Kathleen joined me to talk about their new show, siofra. And siofra is going to be playing at the Red Sandcastle Theatre from June 17 to 28.
So make sure you tune in next week to stick for that for the next episode of Stageworthy with Kathleen Welch.
