Natalie Kaye is Channelling Harpo Marx, Mae West, and Shakespeare All at Once
About This Episode:
Playwright and writer Natalie Kaye joins Phil Rickaby to talk about her wildly ambitious new musical, 1920s Walking Around in a Dream, playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival. The show is a screwball comedy set in an imagined 1920s Jazz Age Chicago, and it’s a retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, translated not into modern English, but into the heightened, slang-drenched language of the Jazz Age. It’s a project Natalie has been quietly nurturing for at least a decade, and hearing her describe its journey from a single translated sonnet to a fully staged musical is genuinely thrilling.
This episode explores:
- How a single translated Shakespeare sonnet launched a decade-long project
- Why A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Jazz Age are a perfect match
- Silent film, vaudeville, and the Marx Brothers as creative inspirations
- The challenge of writing dense, heightened language that audiences can actually follow
- What it means to finally relinquish control and trust your cast and director
- And much more!
Guest: ✍️ Natalie Kaye
Natalie Kaye (she/her) Playwright. Natalie is an award-winning playwright and a published poet. She is also a dancer, choreographer and aerial silks performer. A graduate of York University and the University of Toronto, Natalie has a Masters’ in Drama. She has worked in theatre as a producer, director, playwright, actor and dramaturg. Her one-act play, Mood Swings, won first place in the Pat the Dog’s 24-hour play contest. The play was workshopped by Pat the Dog in February, 2014 and received a full production at Toronto Fringe in 2016 where it was called “beautiful” “well-executed” and “poetic” by Mooney on Theatre. Her short plays, Universe Inc. and A Toast were produced by Newborn Theatre at the Odds and Ends Festival. She is a member of the Vault Creation Lab’s writer’s group. She co-wrote #1 Clown Comedy With Victor & Priscilla at Toronto Fringe in 2025.
Connect with Natalie Kaye:
🌐 Website: unspokentheatrecompany.weebly.com
📸 Instagram: @unspokentheatrecompany
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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 and more.
If they make theatre, 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. I am talking to you after a day at the Toronto Fringe Festival, so I am hot, sweaty, tired, but energized.
If you are watching on YouTube, do me a favour and like this episode, leave a comment so I know that you were here. And if you like Stageworthy in general, do me a favour, hit the subscribe button and the bell icon so that whenever a new episode comes out, you’ll get notified that a new episode is available. If you’re listening to the audio version, make sure that you’re subscribed.
Go to your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy, and hit the follow button. And while you’re there, if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please consider leaving a rating and a review. Your ratings and reviews help new people to find the show, so that would be hugely helpful.
I do want to mention briefly that I do have a Patreon, where the people who are my patrons help me to make the show. I will talk a little bit more about that at the end of the show, right before I tell you who my guest is next week. But this week, my guest is Natalie Kaye.
Natalie is a playwright and poet, and is the writer behind the Toronto Fringe Festival’s 1920s Walking Around in a Dream, which is a 1920s retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I love A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I love that era, having worked with Keystone Theatre and Silent Film plays for quite some time. I am hugely looking forward to this show, and I really enjoyed this conversation with Natalie Kaye, and I hope you will too, because here it comes now.
Natalie Kaye, thank you so much for joining me. You have a show at the Toronto Fringe. You are the playwright of 1920s Walking Around in a Dream.
That is correct. Could you, what is 1920s Walking Around in a Dream?
[Natalie Kaye]
Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me. This is so amazing and exciting. Yes, 1920s Walking Around in a Dream.
I just call it my dream play, but it essentially started as a project where I was contemplating translation, and how odd it is that when you study Shakespeare in school, they give you modern translations of Shakespeare, but, I mean, Shakespeare, it’s English, so it’s kind of just, I don’t know, there’s something puzzling about that. I’m not even saying there’s anything incorrect about that. I mean, it’s far enough away from us, it’s foreign enough that, you know, it is kind of strange.
So it started as this sort of project of mine to consider translation from English to English, because my French is not good enough to do the traditional route for translation, and essentially it turned into what it is today. I can talk more about that later, but it’s essentially a screwball comedy set in the 1920s in Chicago. It’s a musical, and it’s based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it’s on at the Fringe.
[Phil Rickaby]
One of my favorite plays is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is, as a play, it gives you so many opportunities to, you know, win the audience over. It gives you, there’s so many great bits in that, but also it has, it’s been adapted many times.
It’s been adapted, like it was an opera, it’s been a ballet, it’s been so many things. Good reason, I mean, ripe for, you know, adapting, but it is interesting, that idea of when you’re in high school, there are these modern translations of Shakespeare. It’s such a strange thing to me, because, listen, we weren’t allowed to use those when I was in high school.
I’m an old man. They were like, you know, Cliff Notes, Cole’s Notes. They’d be like, how dare you?
They made us like try to figure out what the text actually said, but, you know, again, maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have the translation. What did you love about Midsummer Night’s Dream that made you want to create this adaptation?
[Natalie Kaye]
Honestly, it, because the project began as sort of an experiment, I wasn’t specifically thinking, oh, Midsummer Night’s Dream. I really wasn’t. In fact, it started with the sonnet, My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun, because it’s just a little chunk, a little sonnet.
I thought, maybe I can translate this into what ended up being 1920s Jazz Age slang, which is a very heightened language in itself. It just began this process of translation. As soon as I finished that one sonnet, I was like, there’s potential here.
Then I was kind of dumb, and I decided to translate an entire Shakespearean. It took years and years, so much research. At one point, I had over 70 pages worth of a dictionary just for my own personal use of Jazz Age slang.
Weirdly enough, that was the shorter, easier way to be translating. So, it’s been a very long journey, a very long project. I think once I ultimately decided I wanted to try to do a full play, Midsummer Night’s Dream is just so…
First of all, there are a number of different plots, and you can pick and choose, and that’s what I ended up doing. So, it’s a little bit more incisible chunks, rather than an entire meal. I thought, maybe I can just…
What I ended up doing was, I just focused in on the four lovers, so Demetrius, and Helen, and just the little chunk there. I have little references to Oberon, and Titania, and all that stuff. Even the players, I have sort of references to those, but it’s a little bit more manageable to just focus in.
The other thing is that I really felt like I’m asking a lot from the audience with this one. It’s not Shakespeare, it’s not Shakespearean language, but it is a very heightened language. Lots of slang, lots of metaphors, a lot of it is in rhyme.
It’s just quite rich, and you’re kind of being thrown in the deep end. And I thought, probably the most commonly seen Shakespeare play that you’re taken to is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And like you said, it’s been adapted so many times, even if you haven’t seen the original, you might kind of recognize the plot, or some of the characters, or just a little, a what fools these mortals be.
You might just kind of have heard that somewhere, and not know where. I also knew that I wanted it to be very light, and sort of fit the feeling of a screwball comedy, or like it sort of matches the vibes of being drunk and crazy in a forest, and maybe falling in love with this person, and then in love with this person, and just the confusion and the madness of that. I thought it was just very fitting for the jazz age as well.
You’re sort of just prohibition, you’re getting drunk, and you’re sort of making mistakes, and going so fast, and running around, and having love affairs, and everything. So I just thought it matched the jazz vibe. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well what is it that drew you to the 1920s, the jazz age?
[Natalie Kaye]
Well first of all, I just really, I am a fan of, it’s just a very interesting era for me, first of all. I just think that there’s like, you have the post-war sort of malaise, right? Like all this idea of huge tragedy, and very intense emotions going on.
And then the sort of reaction to that, being like, well, you know, live fast, die young. You know what I mean? Like let’s just drink, and be merry, and let go of a lot of the morals, and different institutions that were from the previous generation.
It’s just, there’s something like so free, and interesting about it.
[Phil Rickaby]
It makes a lot of sense, because of the, I know I was doing a lot of research into World War I, for a project that never went anywhere. But now it’s coming somewhere. One of the things that people noted was that when the men came home from that war, they basically all decided we’re never talking about this.
Yeah. And so they never processed any of the things they saw, or did, or that happened to them. So of course, they would turn to debauchery, and booze, and everything else.
Let’s have fun, so this stuff doesn’t catch up to me.
[Natalie Kaye]
Yeah, yeah. And meanwhile, you have the women, who finally got a taste of freedom, and empowerment, while the men were away at war. They had just tasted some freedoms that they weren’t, you know, didn’t have as much access to, let’s put it that way, previously.
And then suddenly you’re like, no, no, no, get back in the home, get back in the kitchen. You’re like, what? What?
Like, but I tasted freedom, and I liked it. This is just, I don’t know, it’s just really rich, you know? It’s a really rich era.
It’s also just interesting, because it’s not just light, and bubbly, and fun, the way that people kind of think about it in a more superficial way. Like, there are some deeper things, like you say, the sort of like, post-war traumas, and all that. And I mean, alcoholism, for that matter.
I mean, there’s so many things going on, that aren’t just light and bubbly, but there also is the light and bubbly. And that’s why I think it’s so fun to play. And when people are witnessing that, when the audience can just like, watch, and enjoy, and laugh at it, then hopefully later, maybe they’ll see the, you know, a little bit deeper layers.
Like, there are little touches here and there in the script about like, you know, the Great War, and how it sort of derailed people’s lives. And like, I was on a certain pathway, and then the war kind of interrupted my life. Things like that.
But it’s very, it’s just speckled in here and there.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
It’s not too, you know, you can dig for those layers if you want to.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. No, absolutely. It is a fascinating era.
You’ve also got all of the silent film stuff going on. Yeah. And some of the stuff that like, the building blocks of modern film in that era, of which we only have a fraction, because it was all so flammable.
Like, we’ve lost so many films that we only know the titles to and things like that. And so many film stars that we’ve barely seen, because we think Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, but there were, you know, Douglas Fairbanks, but there were hundreds, thousands of people that we don’t think of, because their films are lost.
[Natalie Kaye]
Yes. And also just in general, it’s actually, the silent film definitely had an influence on this play as well. It’s not as strong, but it’s definitely there.
There was like, we had sort of a media watch party for the cast. It was like three, four hours, I’ll be honest, because I just couldn’t get the clips short enough, you know, like, but it was basically a lot of the filmic inspirations that inspired the play. And I had like, Dimitri, Dimitrious is a boxer in this version.
So we were looking at like the Charlie Chaplin classic boxing scene, the Harold Lloyd boxing, like the physicality of those actors are just so amazing. And I also took a lot of inspiration for the character of Andy or Lysander from Harpo Marx. And I just think it’s so delightful that like, it’s definitely a lot of vaudeville influence, for sure.
But there’s something about Harpo where he’s a silent film star in the sense that he doesn’t speak. Yeah, well, even when it’s into fully into sound pictures, it’s kind of this like reference back to that, that I thought, he’s just so magical. Now that you can communicate with just like a little horn.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, they are, I mean, the Marx brothers were vaudeville artists as well. The people who ended up in silent film were vaudeville. So it’s definitely a good through line.
Yeah, excellent through line.
[Natalie Kaye]
We also have some Mae West influences on Helen, like there’s a lot of vaudeville going on vaudeville, silent film kind of moving up.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I have to ask when you were doing your silent film stuff, research, did you, did you, were you able to watch any Mary Pickford?
[Natalie Kaye]
We did watch one singular click. Because again, I was trying to get down hours and hours of footage to just, you know, something digestible. But as you were telling me, I actually was trying to look up Theda Bara because she was sort of this like the vamp, you know, the vamp character.
And I wanted to, she has some influence over the Helen character. And yeah, I, there was an entire video that I might’ve been Cleopatra. I don’t remember off the top of my head, but there was an entire film where they only have like five minutes of footage.
I’m like, Oh man, you know, this would have been perfect to show.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you find it.
I remember when I was doing, when I was working on a silent film project ages ago, we were watching a lot of silent film and we were only able to find one Mary Pickford film. And it was just like two minutes into the film and you realize why she was America’s sweetheart. It’s like she walked on screen and everybody fell in love with this, this actor.
Right. So just incredible.
[Natalie Kaye]
Are you talking about Keystone theatre?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yes. Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
Wonderful. I, my sister mentioned that she saw there was, I didn’t get a chance to see it, but it was a Klondike theme. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
She saw that one.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
She was very impressed with that and kept you in mind for actually, she was kind of thinking like, should we talk to you for advice on this project? And that was years and years ago before we, you know, we’re even close to producing anything like this. So she was very impressed by that.
Yeah. I, I think we also have some Clara Bow. There’s an entire, there are a bunch of references to Clara Bow as being like the it girl, you know, and like the flapper.
I just, I, it’s just a very interesting type.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
And all the expressiveness, you know, and how it influenced the makeup and all the personalities and.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. Absolutely. So it was interesting because, you know, talking about that vamp character and I’m thinking there was a, one of my favorite movies was singing in the rain and there’s a character peripheral character, Zelda, who’s like the vamp, which is probably based on this person.
And, and it’s, it’s funny that you see these things, these tropes that come up and, and they, and we don’t get them now, but they were so huge at the time.
[Natalie Kaye]
Oh, a hundred percent. Like actually singing in the rain is, is one of the biggest influences. If I kind of have been saying roughly, I mean, the amount of influences it’s, it’s innumerable, but if you sort of took like Mark’s brothers singing in the rain, his girl Friday and then Shakespeare and like stuck him in a little blender, that sort of roughly where do you find a 1920s walking around in a dream?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Now you were talking about the dense language of this play, the, the, the 1920s slang, which is, is interesting to take a dense language of Shakespeare and to translate it into a further dense language in the 1920s slang. You, you, you mentioned having your big dictionary of slang terms and things like that.
What, like how, when you started this project, how much did you think you were going to go into this slang? Did you think it was going to be a big part of it?
[Natalie Kaye]
I, as soon as I finished that first sonnet, I kind of hit a crossroads. I was like, am I going to do this or not? If I’m doing it, I’m doing it.
I’m committed to this in the full sense of commitment. Like I probably should have been committed. It was a crazy venture, but I knew I wasn’t going to go halfway.
And I knew that that meant I had to put in just as much research as possible and as much time as possible. I mean, we have weeks and weeks and weeks just sitting in Robart’s library, like copying from different slang dictionaries. And we’re obviously watching different examples of like movies or any other footage, doing research and everything.
And it did hit a certain point where, I mean, I knew that I I’d have to differ from Shakespeare in a number of ways. I knew I’d have to make different choices. And I also knew that this had to be sort of a fantasy realm.
So it’s what I’m calling an imagined 1920s era Chicago. So I know that there are certain things that I’m quite aware aren’t historically accurate, but I’m aware that I made those choices on purpose. If something’s funny, it’s in.
You know what I mean? If something is just like too good to let go, then I’ll keep it in. But I was trying to be very precise.
And the other thing that had a huge influence on what I thought I could show or tell is how… Okay, there’s 1920s Chicago, the actual people talking and doing their own thing. They’re not talking like this.
They’re not talking in heightened language. There’s also Shakespeare’s era. They’re not talking in heightened language then, either.
There’s also actual Shakespearean language. Then there’s modern Canadian language. And it’s all these different things that sort of, I had to have a balance between everything.
I knew that there were certain words that if I used, like, bimbo, for example, there’s a good example. Or maybe goon, frankly. I don’t know.
I won’t get into it. But there are different words that very much will be interpreted differently to the modern Canadian ear, even though the meaning meant something else at the time. So I was trying to pick and choose very carefully.
[Phil Rickaby]
And I think it can also be forgotten that those words existed. It’s the historical writer’s Tiffany problem. Do you know the Tiffany problem?
Which is like, the name Tiffany is historically accurate. You can go quite far back with it. But if you use it because now we don’t think of it as having been like an old name, people will throw up their hands and be like, that’s ridiculous.
The name Tiffany appearing in this historical novel. You have to be careful with the words that way, too.
[Natalie Kaye]
Yes, exactly. I mean, obviously, words evolve. Language evolves.
And I don’t know. It’s such a delicate balance. Because I wanted to have a foundation of research, accuracy, all that.
But also have the allowances for just playfulness and being able to communicate to the audience. I actually, one of the books that really, strangely enough, influenced me was A Clockwork Orange, which you wouldn’t expect. It kind of feels like it’s coming out of left field.
[Phil Rickaby]
I wouldn’t have expected that, no.
[Natalie Kaye]
I mean, it seems to be in the rain at one point. That’s true. It’s because Anthony Burgess just did an incredible job of introducing the reader to the language of the world.
He did talk down to the reader. He stuck them in the deep end. But he repeated certain words in certain ways.
And he gave context clues, so that if you’re patient, and you just stick with it, you’re slowly going to learn those different words. And I thought it was just such an incredible feat. A lot of my writing is influenced by that, not even this in particular.
Just the idea of like, you’re not talking down to the audience, you can throw them in the deep end and just trust that they’re going to hopefully swim until they can find their sea legs. That metaphor kind of went weird, but…
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, because Shakespeare is like that too, right? Exactly.
You can… The first scene of any Shakespeare play is really about acclimatizing. By the time that scene is over, for the most part, the audience has…
Their brain is shifted, and now they understand what’s being said. So if the actors know what they’re saying, and they play it well, yes, then that language barrier doesn’t exist.
[Natalie Kaye]
That’s what I’m hoping for. I mean, I’ve tried very carefully, so there are certain phrases I’ve used more, the truest deal, or I don’t know, I don’t have specific… Or there are certain phrases that I reuse on purpose, so that you might not know the first time.
But with context clues, eventually, you might get them. I also have… I’ve used a number of different…
There’s so many amazing words for being drunk, understandably. And I just would stick in my favorite ones, but it would always be within the context of someone who’s drunk. So then I’m like, hey, let’s introduce a bunch of different words, but in a very playful way where you can pick and choose.
And you don’t have to understand it perfectly, because the actor’s telling you, we’re like, oh, he’s fried to the hat, and then he takes his wig, right? Right. So I was trying really hard to make it…
You’re thrown to the deep end, but just hold on. Hold on a little bit, please. You’ll understand, hopefully.
And in the meantime, hopefully, you’re distracted and entertained by people just doing silly things and singing songs.
[Phil Rickaby]
You alluded to the length of time it took you to write this play. How long were you working on this for? Because you know what?
My first solo play, it took me eight years to write that, and I’d probably still be writing it today if I hadn’t got into a fringe festival. So how long were you writing this for? I know it’s 10 years.
[Natalie Kaye]
I know it’s 10 years. I don’t know exactly how long, but it’s a long time, but it’s a little bit deceptive because it’s not like I was writing this. It was always sort of on the backburner.
And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just kind of how it was. I would dip my toe in it.
It’s such an immense piece that I had to take it in chunks, and I had to go with how my mood was. Can I handle all this? So it’s at least 10 years.
I wasn’t keeping track, I’ll be honest. And to be honest with you, there was another thing that happened when I decided to actually take this on was mentally I had to decide if I was okay if this never got produced. That sounds a little dismal, but it’s just something I had to think about because both me and my sister are playwrights.
We put on our own productions all the time and also other people’s writing. So we know what we’re doing in terms of producing in Toronto on a small budget. And I just knew that, again, this is a dream project in many senses of the word.
I knew that, typically speaking, we will write plays that are four actors and you know, not set in a specific historical time. Not a lot of singing and dancing and props and moving pieces. Pretty simple contemporary writing, that sort of thing.
We try to just be very practical. And this play is not practical. It’s the biggest cast we’ve had.
There’s singing, there’s dancing, there’s props, so many props. There’s a set that we have to build and make. And costumes, obviously, it’s very specific in terms of the date and time and historical setting.
And the language is so dense and thick. And the acting style, the modern acting style doesn’t suit this piece very well. It is sort of like a vaudeville type actor that would bring this out a lot more.
And there are as many of those around these days. So it’s just very ambitious. And I’m just delighted that it’s finally being produced.
It’s just, it really is a dream come true.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that, you know, sometimes we have, it is important to produce things that are not quote unquote practical, right? Because so many times there are theatres who are like, oh, if it’s more than three people, we can’t produce it. Or four people is our absolute mask.
There’s almost no opportunities for big cast shows on the play level. We don’t get to do those outside of festivals, right? And Shakespeare festivals, like Shaw, Shakespeare, Stratford, that sort of thing.
But it is important that people get to stretch those legs and write it. At what point did you decide you were going to enter it for The Fringe?
[Natalie Kaye]
Honestly, it was my sister. She was like, you know what, Nat, it’s time. I don’t even care anymore.
Shut up. We’re doing this. I think it was also because it’s 1926 and the play originally was set, I think 1927 or 28.
And she’s like, you know what? This is perfect. You know, a hundred years later.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
Let’s just do this thing. You know, that’s kind of what happened. I have had sort of a staged reading of this done years and years and years ago.
That’s also when I decided I’m like, I don’t know if we can actually fully produce this, but I’d love to. But other than that, this is the first time. I mean, it wasn’t a musical at that time.
It’s changed. The script has changed significantly since then. So it’s just like so crazy to see it come to life.
It’s really amazing. I’m really proud of it. Like proud of like just the cast and the crew have been so amazing.
They’re working just so hard. It’s amazing. I know you that’s just a theatre thing.
A lot of the time, like you just have to work so hard. But I don’t know.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s just incredible. You have worked as a playwright. You’ve been a director, producer, actor and dramaturge and I believe a choreographer.
[Natalie Kaye]
I’ve dabbled. I’ve dabbled.
[Phil Rickaby]
Do you primarily identify as a playwright or do you shift how you identify yourself based on the role that you’re playing in a production?
[Natalie Kaye]
Sort of both. But if anyone asked me, I’d say writer. And I just say actually just writer rather than playwright because I just write whatever style or thing.
Typically it’s fiction, but it might be poetry. It might be a short story. It might be a play.
I sort of like let it be whatever it’s going to be. So probably writer, but definitely I just sort of show up and do what needs to be done, which is very typical of like amateur theatre. You just sort of like go and show up and suddenly you’re doing the props.
Suddenly you’re doing costumes and makeup. You’re doing promo videos. You know, you’re suddenly the videographer for the day.
Like, you know, you sort of just wear many hats.
[Phil Rickaby]
What is your theatre origin story? You know, you mentioned that your sister’s a playwright. You’re a playwright.
You’re a writer. How did you get exposed to theatre and how did you decide that it was a thing you wanted to be involved in?
[Natalie Kaye]
Interesting. This also was my sister’s fault, if you can believe it. I specifically remember I was three years old and my sister put on a play for the family, like just, you know, mom and pop, and it was Cinderella.
I played Cinderella and I had one line, you whacked my dress. She played every other role. She wrote, she directed, she produced, everything, costume, everything.
That was actually my origin story. And she subsequently would put on plays in grade school and all the way up. And I was always, you know, the little sister, the little baby, the little whatever role, the little mouse, the little whatever, all the way up.
We ended up going to theatre school as well. I went to York, to Glendon actually, which is like the little French college for theatre and English. And then both me and Nina actually got our MA in drama studies at U of T.
That was very interesting because we were about a year or two apart from when we were both attending. And we don’t look that similar, but for some reason, people kept mistaking us for each other. It really was Shakespearean.
It was like Comedy of Errors, where someone would just come up to me on campus and start, you know, massaging my arms. Like, it’s so good to see you. Like, it’s been so long.
I’m like, why are, oh God, actors are so touchy-feely. And then it turns out, no, he just thought I was my sister.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, I mean, you both do have names that begin with N. You don’t look alike.
[Natalie Kaye]
We sound similar, right?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
We looked more similar at the time. There was one insane incident where we were in the exact same play in theatre school at the same time, same play, different characters, obviously. We were on stage at the same time at certain points.
And someone came up to my sister later and said, how did they do that? How did they have you on stage twice? Did they use mirrors?
I mean, that’s a little far.
[Phil Rickaby]
So you must have something about your sister bullying you into theatre or like pulling you into theatre must have stuck.
[Natalie Kaye]
Oh God, don’t tell her that’s what I said. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[Phil Rickaby]
Not bullying. I mean, that’s my word, but like you were dragged into theatre, but you must have loved something about it because you’re still doing it. You went to school for it.
So for you, what is it that you loved? What made you want to keep at it?
[Natalie Kaye]
I think that art in general is just so many things to so many people. It’s just, it can be so many things and theatre for me. Oh my God.
It, depending on my, you know, the time of day, my mood, my, you know, the type of just all sorts of factors. It can mean so many different things. And that’s where I find so fascinating about it.
It can be therapy. It can be a way to communicate. It can be a way to build a community.
It can also be a way to let out rage. Know what I mean? Like outrage in a sort of more controlled environment and like purge ideas.
It’s also frankly a really amazing way to deal with control issues in a slightly more, you know, controlled way where I, I have, especially as a writer, as a playwright, as a writer, I write my little script, you know, or big script in this case. I take my time. I research is all in my control.
I do every single little thing, exactly how I want it. And then it’s given to other people and I have to just accept whatever happens, you know, it’s the most incredible exercise in relinquishing control and collaborating with people. I think it’s quite beautiful.
Actually. It’s also, I think theatre really attracts some just incredible people, especially amateur theatre, because everyone knows you, you’re not in it for the money. You’re not in it for the fame.
You might be in it for power control things, but you know, let’s put this aside. For the most part, people are doing it because they just love it and they’ll just put their whole heart into it. And it’s, it’s amazing because you’ll, so much of it is just the journey and the process is like, it makes everything.
Like when people actually sit, when the audience sits down to watch a piece of theatre, they only see like the tip of the iceberg. They see like just the last little bit, which is, I don’t know. It’s so interesting to go behind the scenes quite literally, and just peek behind the curtain and have a sense of like, oh wow, that’s where that started.
That’s, those are the peaks and valleys that this went through to get to this final, you know, place. Yeah. It’s just, I don’t know, there’s something magical about it.
I also feel it’s sort of like when theatre is good, it’s the most incredible thing. It, you know, makes you feel, it makes you cry. It makes you feel connected or, or scared, or it can affect you so much.
When it’s bad, it’s very bad. It hurts your soul, or at least with me. And I feel like with a lot of people, when they go to plays or theatre, I think a lot of people don’t necessarily feel that way.
And that’s how I know that I’m, I’m made for the theatre. Because it hurts me. The theatre hurts me one way or another, either it makes me cry out of happiness or out of that.
[Phil Rickaby]
You know, you, you were mentioning about how as a playwright, you, you have a real, you really have to trust the people who take on your work. They say that film is a director’s medium. It’s rare that anybody knows who wrote a movie.
[Natalie Kaye]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Right. But theatre is a, is a writer’s medium, they say, because you know, the playwright’s name usually go, people know the playwright’s name. And yet the playwright has so little control.
Once the play is given to a director and a group of actors, you’ve done what you can, you put it all in the play. You also could have like, this is what I want in the stage directions. And they’re just going to ignore everything in this stage directions and do their own thing.
And you have to hope that the, you put enough in the text to make it work. It is an exercise in trust.
[Natalie Kaye]
I agree. I think one thing that’s really helped me with that is actually to speak to that. I know that there are some, I think it was David Mamet, but there are certain writers who even try to embed their stage directions so that, you know, the director isn’t allowed to get rid of them.
So, oh my dear, you look beautiful in that long red flowing red dress.
[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
Your blue eyes look lovely in those glasses. So I understand. I understand that feeling, but I do think that I’m something that’s really helped me is trying different roles on being the director and having to work with the script.
You know, it changes everything. Working with your actors. I just did the choreography for a short horror play called The Matchmaker.
And it was so interesting because the, I really, in the stage directions, they had a real slap, like an actual slap. They had some fight choreography. They had certain movements, you know, in the stage directions.
And I was fully on board with that. I thought it would look really good. I thought it was great.
When I saw the theatre space, I knew it would be impossible to do. It was just too small. Like the distance between the stage and the audience was so, like, small that if, so you’d have to actually just slap the actor.
And I didn’t want them to do that. I just didn’t. Otherwise it would read like a fake slap.
So we ended up making it a lot more stylistic. And also in terms of layers, like I knew that I couldn’t have her like on the ground rolling around or something. You just, the audience couldn’t see her.
So these are just minimal examples of how sometimes when you’re the director, you’re not making changes purely because, you know, you’re evil or something. Or because you disagree with the original vision, even. A lot of the time you’re just trying to problem solve, frankly.
And that’s really helped me a lot to realize that even if my vision, you know, my script and everything, I’ve worked out everything and I know exactly how it should be. In the space when it’s, you know, that’s a piece of paper, ultimately. You know, it’s a script.
You have to, things will change when it actually gets up on its feet. Even just having someone say the lines out loud is different than how they’re written, you know? And it’s like with George F.
Walker, I remember reading one of his plays and it was the most depressing thing I’ve ever, like just so depressing, reading it. And then I saw a production and I was laughing the whole time. And it’s a perfect example where theatre is meant to be performed.
It’s not going to reach its full shape until it’s actually performed. And that’s why it’s a collaboration. It just, it has to be.
And there’s something amazing about it. You do have to trust people, but also I found a lot of the time that, I mean, if a play’s bad, a play’s bad, you know what I mean? You’ve tried your best.
If you wrote the script, you did your best. You put in the work beforehand and something goes awry. It can kind of mess up for any number of reasons.
That’s another really important thing to remember is if the lighting guy forgets the cue, no one’s watching the play. He’s ruined the play. So it’s sort of this fragile, really interesting experiment.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Oh, you were talking about how, you know, hearing somebody read a line out loud is, it can be different from how it’s written on the page, which is why that’s so important as part of the process of like the writing process is to hear people say it and figure it. Oh, that is so, I thought that was great, but that is so clunky.
Yeah. The only way to do it is to have actors do it. Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
That’s one of the biggest things with this play, actually, is that I needed to hear people say it. I really did. I didn’t know how it would go until like we finally sat down and did the, you know, we were just sitting around the table and we just like did the reading and we actually did what I was calling a semi-cold reading because there were a few people who had access to the earlier just by the way that things worked out.
And the cast, so the cast, most of the cast didn’t know what they were getting into. And I purposefully said, I’m sorry, I’m going to throw you in the deep end and please just, if you don’t know a word, try your best to keep going, because I really wanted to get the information of like someone who’s a first reader, like first, first encountering this piece, because I didn’t know how much people would understand. And it ended up shocking me and going so amazingly.
Everyone was laughing the whole time, which gave me a lot of hope that it would go okay. But it was sort of like five minutes leading, like leading up to it. I’m like, I don’t even know.
I don’t know what we should do. I guess we’ll go with it. I guess we’ll try.
But I was like in full on panic mode. Like, I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know if they’ll understand it.
I don’t know if the audience will get it. But we made it.
[Phil Rickaby]
You have quite a history of plays at the fringe. I’m seeing Mood Swings in 2016, Siren in 2018, and number one, Clown Comedy in 2025. And this is now another one.
What does the fringe mean to you as a playwright, producer?
[Natalie Kaye]
For me, the way that I think about fringe is sort of like a little buffet, like a sampler platter. I think it’s one of the easiest ways that I found to introduce non-theatre people to theatre. The prices start at $5.
It’s like $5 to $15 roughly. And they also have lots of free events and different things going on as well. But it’s just a sampler plate, you know?
You can go to a little comedy and you’re like, oh, that wasn’t quite to my taste. So you try a musical, you know? Then you try some…
It’s just like, there’s a whole variety. The variety is crazy. There’s, I think, 123 shows this year.
That’s quite a buffet. So I think it’s just a perfect way to get people out to theatre. I think it’s a lot harder sell to say, oh, we’re going to Mirvish or something and it’s going to be $120.
You know, it’s a musical. It’s a new musical. You haven’t seen it.
You don’t know anything about it. Good luck. And it may or may not be to your taste.
It’s just a harder sell. But with something like this, it just gives opportunities for people to bring in more audience because we need it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. It’s funny because I remember years ago, I was an usher at one of the Mirvish theatres and I worked the door for certain periods of time. And that’s when you heard what people actually thought about the show.
But because they paid so much for their ticket, they never wanted to say, I didn’t like that show. And so they would find ways to be positive about it. But you would really figure out that when people said things like, everybody did such a great job, they did not like the show.
It’s like the code. It’s code for I paid a lot of money. I didn’t like it.
But I can’t quite bring myself to admit that I did not like that show. But it’s so fascinating to get to witness that that happened as an audience tries to delude itself into having enjoyed the show they paid a lot of money for.
[Natalie Kaye]
That’s also like in Singing in the Rain when they watch the preview and they come out, they’re like, she was the one.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Natalie Kaye]
Oh, that Lina Lamont. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Except Lina thought it was great because it was good and loud. I liked it. Yeah.
If any listeners have not seen that film, they really must. Oh, it’s amazing.
[Natalie Kaye]
Singing in the Rain. It’s about the transition between the era when there were silent pictures moving into sound pictures. And it sort of has everything in it that you can watch.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite like the one of my favorite things about silent film, Charlie Chaplin kept silent for so long, we and just some sound effects, what sound effects. Also, there was a gibberish song that he sang and it was it was all to keep from speaking because he he said that when the tramp speaks, he dies.
Yeah. Which means that when he filmed The Great Dictator and had a big speech at the end, that was his sacrifice of the of the tramp. Yeah.
For the cause that he believed in, which I think makes that speech mean a lot, a lot more to me.
[Natalie Kaye]
It’s so beautiful. Yeah. We actually the nonsense song was one of was part of my watch party.
[Phil Rickaby]
As as it should be. Oh, what that that is in which film is that in? That’s in Is it Modern Times?
I don’t know. It is Modern Times. It is Modern Times.
Well, Modern Times has my absolute favorite bit where Charlie Chaplin is walking down the street for some reason. It looks really determined. And then somebody hands him a flag and then he’s leading a protest and then he gets arrested.
Like it’s just like such a visual gag that like could only happen in film and only he could pull it off. Yeah. Just like so good.
I love it. But you mentioned you have a master’s in drama from U of T, you and your sister both. Wait, is it an MFA?
No, just no masters. I know a couple of people who have MFAs. I always try to I always say, oh, motherfucking artist.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, yeah.
Yeah. Now, how like because, you know, that’s that’s a very academic aspect of theatre schooling. Has the academic work or the academic training been useful in the creative practice or is it was it like more of a means to an end for you?
[Natalie Kaye]
Honestly, I had been working in theatre for so long before I even touched a foot into schools. Like I also went to an arts high school, Rosedale. So I even before that, though, I was doing theatre like I would say technically since I was three.
I don’t know if you count that as a public performance, but but I think probably my first public performance would have been in I was probably five or six years old because I was in J.K. and I played a role in, again, Phantom of the Opera, actually. My sister wrote in a role for me being Christine’s daughter, who she’s recounting the tale to. So I don’t remember if I even hit a line, but.
But I’ve just been performing and working on the practical side of it for much longer. So this was a lot more. I mean, I love this, obviously, I’m kind of a word nerd and I like to do research on things.
I definitely wouldn’t call myself a historian, but I like to have at least a foundation, a solid foundation. I like to do good world building, whether or not it’s sort of fantastical or not. I just think it’s it’s a lot.
I don’t know. I just appreciate that in other works when even if it’s some nonsensical society where it’s like some crazy futuristic thing where they don’t need to have rules, you know, the world doesn’t need to have rules, technically, but they do. That’s so impressive to me that there’s something that that the writer has really thought through and dedicated time to, because I feel like it proves that the writer has put in a lot of thought and time and effort and in the hopes that the audience will do the same.
And I don’t mean they have to dedicate 10 years of research. It doesn’t have to be that committed. There’s only one crazy person in this project, but just the idea of going in and having patience.
And again, it’s trust. It comes back to trust, because we talked about having a crew that you can trust and a cast that you can trust to deal with your work, but it’s also the audience. The audience is a very, just a major participant in the whole experience.
And it’s a participant that is kind of the most chaotic one. You won’t really know what they’re going to do. They haven’t been at rehearsals.
They don’t know when they’re supposed to laugh. That’s happened to me so many times when my punchline kind of just floats and then they laugh at the next thing. And I’m like, wait, what?
Yeah, but OK.
[Phil Rickaby]
It is a fascinating experience to present a new work for an audience the first time. I remember one of our early Keystone Theatre shows, we were presenting it at the Toronto Festival of Clowns many, many years ago. And there’s that moment where we think the first laugh is, but we don’t know if the audience is going to do that.
And we’re just like backstage as the play is going on, just like, is it going to play? Is it going to happen? And then it does.
And you’re like, it works the way we think it does, which is a fascinating and harrowing experience to have the first time.
[Natalie Kaye]
Yeah, especially because you’ve been living with it so much. It’s just so hard because, again, we’ve actually, this is a musical. We’ve turned it into a musical, by the way, like that was so simple and easy.
So this version of the play is now a musical. We’ve taken the tunes from Jazz Age songs and then Declan Meagher, our director and musical director, has done arrangements, new arrangements. And we worked on lyrics as well, where I took a lot of my original monologues and soliloquies and have transformed them to fit these tunes, these melodies.
And it was a lot of work, a lot of effort. And the reason why I brought it up is, first of all, to brag. But second of all, I am realizing that we have to now pause for, hopefully, for the audience to clap and react.
And that is not something at all that in the original script I needed to worry about. And I don’t mean worry. I just mean I had to think about because that will change the flow of the show.
And it also might increase the length of the show. And Fringe was very, very particular about the length of the show. So it’s just an interesting thing.
That’s like one more factor that I’ll have to kind of wait until the night, not even opening night, because frankly, every night will be different. I mean, you might not get anyone clapping. I have no idea.
I really don’t. There is one song in particular. I’m not sure how it’ll go because this singer gets interrupted in the song by tripping over a drunken character.
So I have a feeling you might not be clapping. You might get laughter, I’m hoping.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, that’s a tough question because you have to be able to get your cast to be able to stop and give the audience a chance to applaud. But if it’s not there, to just keep going. And do you react to it?
[Natalie Kaye]
Do you stay in character? Do you freeze? What do you do?
[Phil Rickaby]
I think it’s important to look at, if you could watch filmed musicals, filmed stage productions, see what they’re doing. What do they do when the song is done? Because I don’t know how to answer that question.
I don’t know what the answer to that is.
[Natalie Kaye]
I think it’s sort of up to the production. And what I think is so wonderful about this production in particular is just that I love the cast. They’re so fun.
And I think I’m totally, like speaking, going back to Trust, maybe in my head, you know, Andy was a certain way, like he was, he was partly inspired by Harpo Marx. Like he does speak, he has a lot of lines, in fact. But just certain feelings about the way that Harpo is, where he’ll just randomly stick his leg up on someone’s arms and suddenly, like this is very confusing and chaotic.
And but so I had this sort of image of what Andy would be and what Dimitri would be when I was writing it. And a lot of that has completely transformed because obviously each individual has their own interpretations. And I love this, this Andy.
He’s wonderful. I love this Dimitri. I think I’m just so happy to let them do what that Andy would do in that moment.
I think that Andy might take a bow even. I don’t know. And I think I personally would be fine with it.
I think maybe it’s up to the director. Frankly, I also need to let him decide. But I personally, I’ve gotten to this certain point where these are their characters now.
You know, this is their interpretation. I think I’m so excited to see what they do.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that’s the most healthy thing you could do as a playwright is to be able to be like, I did my part and now it’s theirs. That’s all I can do. Yeah.
That’s the hope. Yeah, absolutely. As we’re drawing to a close, as we are recording this, it is a few weeks before Fringe, a couple of weeks before Fringe starts.
What are you looking forward to about having this play out there?
[Natalie Kaye]
Well, I mean, I’m just, I was tearing up the other day. I was talking to my friend about it, how this has just been such a long project. I didn’t know if it would ever be produced.
And the fact that it’s just up on its feet is already enough for me, personally. I mean, I don’t know that the cast would be happy if we just stopped now, but I don’t want to. But I feel like I’m good.
I’m already good. Whatever happens. And I’m mostly just excited to see the reactions.
I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ll be. I’m really hoping that people enjoy it.
I think they will. It is a good show. It actually just is.
I know it is. I’ve been watching. I’ve been laughing.
I’ve been entertained. I’ve been so delighted. And it’s just growing and becoming even more itself.
So I already know that I’ve done my best. Everyone is doing their best. And it is a good show.
So all the rest, I mean, the rest is applause. I was going to say the rest is silence. Like, no, no, that’s the opposite.
I should also mention that after The Fringe, we already have a remount, which is incredible. It’s going to be remounted. It’s going to be an outdoor production at St. James Park, which is at Church and King. It’s going to be in August. You can find out more information at unspokentheatre.com about that. But it’s a free event, a free outdoor event.
So we’re very excited about that.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, Natalie, thank you so much for joining me.
I really appreciate it. Looking forward to 1920s walking around in a dream at the Toronto Fringe. Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. Before I get to who my guest is next week, please let me tell you about my Patreon because I can’t do this show without the people who’ve chosen to back me on Patreon. Even though podcast is given to you for free, there are costs involved with putting out a podcast.
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You know, I am covering the cost of those things. I’m not currently being paid for the time that I put into the podcast all the time scheduling interviews, doing research, performing interviews, editing the episodes and everything else that goes into preparing this podcast. I do that for the love of it.
But it would be great to, you know, get paid for that. So if you would love to help me get there, please consider becoming a patron by going to patreon.com/stageworthy. Patrons get early access to episodes, we have some conversations about the things in Canadian theatre.
And you know what, the more people who join the Patreon, the more I’ll ultimately be able to offer my patrons. So if that’s of interest to you, if you like stageworthy and want to help me make it please go to patreon.com/stageworthy. My guest next week is Peter Fernandez.
Peter is an award winning theatre creator, actor, assistant director, he’s directing his first full show for the first time at the Shaw Festival. He’s directing Sleuth at the Shaw Festival. I loved this conversation.
I hadn’t had the opportunity to chat with Peter before. And I really enjoyed this conversation. And you will too next week on Stageworthy.
Please tune in.
