Annie Luján & Veronica Hortigüela are Bringing Chaos to the Monastery with Monks
About This Episode:
Annie Luján and Veronica Hortigüela are the creators and performers behind Monks, a two-person clown show about a pair of medieval Spanish monks who invite a wagon full of strangers to spend a day at their monastery; and chaos ensues. What started as a self-funded, unscripted experiment at the Toronto Fringe in 2024 became one of the hottest tickets in the city, spawning multiple remounts and a triumphant run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before returning home to Toronto for a full production at Tarragon Theatre.
Guests: 🎭 Annie Luján & Veronica Hortigüela
Annie Luján (she/her) is a Dora Award-winning Costa Rican-Canadian actor and clown. She is a graduate of the 2022 Soulpepper Academy and Concordia University. As a clown, Annie has trained/worked internationally in Italy, the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. Her credits include: Laura Secord’s Thing (Crow’s – Upcoming), Dance Nation (Coal Mine), The Welkin, King Lear (Soulpepper), A Little Closer (The Vault) Last Landscape (Bad New Days), Comedy of Errors (The Grove) and Storybook Search (Bad Hats).
Veronica Hortigüela (she/her) is a Dora-Award winning Spanish-Canadian actor, clown, and playwright, born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario. She is one half of the creative/performance team behind MONKS (Tarragon, Edinburgh Fringe, Theatre Centre, Crow’s, County Stage, Toronto Fringe). She’s passionate about seeing theatre through various phases of development and has had the pleasure of working with Canadian Stage, Crow’s, Buddies in Bad Times, Stratford, Tarragon, Factory, Shakespeare in the Ruff, and YPT on the development of new plays. Performance credits include: The Shoplifters [Upcoming], Bremen Town, Feast (Tarragon Theatre), The Bidding War, Prodigal (Crow’s Theatre), Casimir and Caroline (Howland Co., Dora Award – Best Ensemble), Little Women, Every Little Nookie (Stratford Festival) and Dry Land (Cue6).
Connect with Annie & Veronica:
📸 Instagram: @monksonstage
Get Tickets to Monks @ Tarragon Theatre October 20-November 8: https://tarragontheatre.com/plays/tarragon-season-26-27/monks/
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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 to stage managers.
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All right, let’s get into this week’s guests. My guests are Annie Luján and Veronica Hortigüela, the creators and performers of the hit show Monks. They are just about to start presenting Monks at the Tarragon Theater from October 20th to November 8th.
A triumphant return from their massive success at the Edinburgh Fringe, as well as their previous successes both in Toronto Fringe and remounts at Crowes and the Theatre Centre. This show just wins people over every time it runs. So just the fact that they were able to be as successful as they were at the Edinburgh Fringe and now returning home to Toronto at the Tarragon Theater, which is actually the theater where they first performed Monks at the Toronto Fringe.
So it’s a homecoming in many different ways. This is such a fun conversation and I hope you enjoy it. Here is my conversation with Annie and Veronica, the creators and performers of Monks.
Annie Luján, Veronica Hortigüela, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it so much. You’re here to talk about Monks, which has been massive since it’s…
Did it premiere at the Toronto Fringe? It did. Yeah.
So since the Toronto Fringe, I know there was a remount, at least one remount after the Fringe. And then the Edinburgh Fringe festival this past summer, where everything I hear, that went really well and it got quite a lot of attention. So before I go too far into that, could one of you or both of you explain what Monks is?
[Annie Luján]
Totally. Yeah. Just the preface, I guess, that Monks is a two-person clown show.
And like most clown shows, it’s really hard to explain or give a solid pitch because it just devolves in so many ways. But it is about two medieval monks in Spain and they work at a monastery and they’ve decided on their first day off in five years to invite a wagon full of strangers to their home and just spend a day together doing nothing. And from there, dot, dot, dot, chaos.
[Phil Rickaby]
As you say that it is difficult to describe, like so many clown shows are. I wonder, how do you pitch this show to an audience? When you’re at Edinburgh and you’re trying to convince people to come and see the show, what are you telling them?
[Annie Luján]
I mean, our most successful attempts at pitching the show were us dressed in costume. Because it’s hard to explain, we relied more on the visual element of us interacting in character, dressing up as monks, walking up and down the Royal Mile, just trying to give people the energy of the show rather than worrying too much about trying to find people who connected with the content. Because like a lot of clown shows, the content really isn’t the thing.
It’s the world, the energy, the games, the relationships are, I would say, take priority a lot of the time.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, in terms of like, because this show, I mean, again, at the Toronto Fringe, you couldn’t get tickets to this show. This was it was it was kind of massive. And then I know the remounts also were selling crazy and then going to to Edinburgh.
What was it like on that trajectory, on that roller coaster for each of you?
[Veronica Hortigüela]
In the eight months of creating Monks, we often looked at each other and thought, what are people going to think? Are we giving away too much of what we like outside of the professional theatres we’ve been lucky to work in? And we were conscious of the fact that we were giving ourselves a sort of job and a character to play that really existed outside any concept of a hit or a typecast.
So we had no idea what the reception would be like and were obviously relieved and elated that it was so well received in Toronto in its first run at the Fringe. And then we were thrilled that we got to do it again a few months later at Crows and then again a few months later at Theatre Centre. And while that was all really exciting, we were conscious of the fact that Edinburgh is, in a way, it feels like the playing field changes completely.
It’s such an enormous festival and we were prepared for any outcome, including the time-honoured tradition of playing to a house of absolutely no one. And we’re very lucky again to build on because, as Annie said, it’s a difficult show to explain to people. But in that way, I think audience members managed to pass it along to others and say, you just kind of have to go and see it.
Trust me, I can’t explain it to you. So we were prepared to crash and burn in Edinburgh, although we were so optimistic and were thrilled that it went the way that it did.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think you kind of have to be prepared to crash and burn in Edinburgh. It’s so massive. I mean, coming from the Canadian Fringe Festival system, where it’s like two weeks each Fringe and it’s 100 shows, 125 shows, whatever that might be, to a month of shows with over 3,000 shows in the festival.
How do you prepare yourself for that kind of massive festival?
[Annie Luján]
Yeah, I mean, we knew months in advance we were going and there is quite a lot, especially when we’re, you know, producing elements of the show ourselves. And we’re thinking about merch and marketing and the performance itself, but also the things we need to build the hype around the performance and reaching out to people and how, for us, a big element of our show, you know, not to spoil anything, is cleanup. And for Edinburgh, we were given five minutes to load in, five minutes to load out.
And so a lot of our preparation was how in the world are we going to do this? Because in my experience as a theatre-goer, Monks is like one of the messiest shows I’ve ever seen done in Canada. So that was a big thing that we had to, like, buy vacuums for, a wagon, like, be so, so on it and delegate to it so that we could achieve the show every night.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Five minutes? Holy shit.
That is because I remember doing a show, playing the style of silent film, we toured across Canada and we rehearsed our setup and takedown. Like, we had rehearsals of just that. And that was for 15 minutes of setup and takedown.
Five minutes is just insane.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Totally. So we just drilled as a team. We just sat around every table and went, OK, and when I’m cleaning this, you’re doing what?
Striking that. And when I’m packing that out of the room, you’re doing what? Sweeping that.
And it just, like, relies a level of, it relies on a level of coordination and trust that everyone is trying to achieve the same thing, which is get in and get out without making an enemy of the technicians. And that.
[Phil Rickaby]
Which you absolutely cannot do. You cannot risk making the technicians your enemy in any setting, but especially in a French setting.
[Annie Luján]
Totally. And we’ve been so lucky. I mean, when we present our show to technicians and the elements of our show, and especially our show has a lot of lentils, and that is usually a thing that makes people quite apprehensive.
But usually once our first run is done, we’ve been very lucky that a lot of our technicians just happen to really enjoy the show. And so they kind of, they allow us to carry on in our craziness.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
And I also think that audiences, audiences appreciate that it’s kind of this incredible act of self-flagellation, especially in a French festival. Most of the people attending know the game. They know that there’s another show coming in in the next 15 minutes.
So I think with a bit of a wink and a nod, it also is a way of setting the show apart that we’ve, we’ve executed this, hopefully exciting spectacle in front of you, and we’ve gone all out and we’re willing to pay the price, which is the cleanup we’re about to have to do. In fact, we’ve had audience members who’ve tried to linger and watch it happen, because especially when we performed it in a fringe setting, we’ve bowed and we don’t leave the space. We just go straight into striking.
So I think people are also intrigued by, by the act of the strike.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, now after the, after Enbro, now you’re, you’re back in Toronto and you are about to present this at Terragon. So that’ll be like three major theatres in the city that you’ve done this show at.
You’re kind of collecting all the midsize houses. You get a full set. What is, like, now that you’re, you’re coming back to do this show, how does it feel coming off the Enbro run to be doing it back home?
[Annie Luján]
Yeah, I mean, emotionally and energetically, it feels like we just got off a ramp and we’re getting right back on. But there’s also, to your point about coming home, I don’t know if you’re aware, but we first performed Monks at the Toronto Fringe in 2024 at Terragon. And we’re currently rehearsing for the show in the room we performed it in.
So there is this, like, kind of magical thing right now of, like, it’s really coming home in that way, which is special, too.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. You just don’t have the, the pressure of, first off, that fast cleanup, but also you’re not having to do a fast setup either, which is, has got to be nice. Yeah.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Yeah, it was a roll through the highs and lows of Edinburgh, knowing that in a couple of months we would be back in our home space with a home crowd who were so lucky, love the show and champion the show and keep coming back to the show. Knowing that that was on the horizon was also a really nice treat on the days when Edinburgh was especially challenging.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, a Fringe festival is always challenging. Years ago, when I was on a solo tour, I said to myself, I said, looked at other people and I said, if you didn’t have at least one day when you felt like absolute garbage and were crying in a corner, were you actually on a Fringe tour? Like, that’s just part of the sad experience.
As somebody who hasn’t had the pleasure to see the show, because again, it’s wildly successful every time you’ve done it. I’m so, I’ve heard, again, it’s that thing where people are like, you have to see it. I don’t want to tell you a thing about it, but you have to see it.
Like so many people who rave about it in that way. But I am so curious how this so began. What was, how did it come about?
How did you come up with this, this, this show?
[Annie Luján]
Yeah. Well, yeah, I’ll preface this and saying that Veronica and I went to high school together. So we’ve known each other for 15 years.
And that’s a big part of how the show came together. And I’ll mention, although it isn’t a huge part, but people often find it amusing that we went to Catholic school together. And so we did grow up around this like Catholicism, but the show came about when we got our slot at Toronto Fringe.
And it was kind of this thing of we didn’t have a plan, we got the slot. And we’ve been training in clown for years at this point, haven’t shown anyone what we’re up to. We are truly just like performing for our peers and like inviting our friends and our boyfriends over and just being like, here’s our play.
And then no one else was seeing it. And we sat down. And that’s the same day that we decided we were actually doing this.
We both said monks, we kind of just knew because we loved this like period world. And Veronica brought the idea of monks who count lentils as their job. And that was like the first seed of the idea was these, to me like enigmatic figures, because what we were really drawn to was in paintings of monks, they’re often depicted as either pious about mysterious cloaked figures on a hill, or they’re rosy cheeked making beer kind of like gregarious.
And there was that weird balance of like, made me really curious, like who actually were these weird men who lived isolated from the world, seemingly very pious and but also through research finding out that like, the reason they kept on, you know, upping their level of, you know, piousness or like religious tasks was because they kept rebelling. They were partying way too hard. And they had to keep coming in and be like, No, guys, we need to, you know, settle down.
So we were really inspired by like the chaos of these weird men. So I’d say that was that was the first thing.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
And then once we began to, as as Annie said, dive into the world of monks, we were so pleased by the amount of structure that exists in their worlds. Because with every rule exists a game and a rule that can be broken by a clown. So there’s so much rich play that already exists in that possibility.
[Phil Rickaby]
There’s something that I really want to get to really quickly, because this is a real, like the creation of a show. I love talking about the creation of a show. But there’s something about the idea of clown.
And I want to address, I remember years ago, the show doing the show at the Toronto Festival of Clowns back when it existed. And I mentioned it to people and their reaction is, Oh, clown, I’ll be miles away from there. You know, there’s the whole like, they think circus clown, they think it they think like that whole thing.
But we’re not talking about clown in terms of like big shoes and red nose. We’re talking about European clown. So what does that cut?
What does clown mean to the both of you?
[Annie Luján]
I mean, I think it’s such a fantastic medium and craft that for me, there’s nothing else that I feel like I could spend my whole lifetime training in and still go deeper and find out more about this really mysterious thing. I, for me, it’s about audience. And it’s about the difference between making theatre that could be a TV show or could be a movie, and theatre and performance that needs people, it needs connection, it needs community.
And it needs our humanity, it needs us to fail and and see people failing. Plus, I think there’s a huge clown renaissance happening across across the world right now. And we’re just we have so many like heroes, that we’re watching their kind of rise and watching clown become more mainstream in a way.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Something that I love about clown, which I would echo everything Annie has said, something that I love about clown is that it celebrates failure in a way that other theatre tries to perfect wrinkling out the errors and the failures. You know, we try to make a play that can be the same every night so that every theatregoer who comes, subscriber or not, is seeing the same quality of show, an excellent show, which is a beautiful thing to strive for. But as Annie said, you might start veering into the land of film and television, with that line of thinking.
And clown celebrates that if we are all here in a room, the reality is something could go wrong at any moment, because in life, something can go wrong at any moment. So I love that clown celebrates that as opposed to trying to iron it out, or seeing it as an obstacle to overcome.
[Phil Rickaby]
It is that thing of, where in theatre, everybody says, you know, it’s never the same each night, even though you’re striving for the audience to have that same experience. It’s that to the nth degree, because now all of a sudden, you’re almost like that. This audience, their reactions inform what you do in a way that the audience reactions in a straight play don’t.
And so every, it’s never going to be the same. It’s never going to be close, because every audience will be different. And that’s a fascinating thing about clown.
[Annie Luján]
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, some of my favorite shows have been when, now we don’t encourage kids to come to the show.
This is not a kid’s show. But some parents who have maybe seen it before think, I’m going to bring my whole family. And all of a sudden, in the front row, we have two 11-year-olds, like, just like wide-eyed, like, what the heck is going on?
And, you know, that changes the show completely. Everyone’s curious about what they’re thinking about the show, how they can get involved. And it’s just so fun, also, to give them permission to actually play in a theatre.
So yeah, it absolutely, the audience affects every show differently.
[Phil Rickaby]
It is something we don’t, like, we don’t get to do. We don’t get to interact with shows in the way that a clown show invites us to. When we go to see something on a Mirvish stage, for example, we are expected to sit there quietly and watch and applaud when it’s time or laugh when it’s time.
We’re not expecting and not expected to interact with the people on the stage. Do you find that audiences take some coaxing to participate, or are they right there from the beginning?
[Annie Luján]
It really depends, and you can kind of feel out the energy for each show. But over the eight months that Veronica and I devised this piece, audience comfort was so important to us. And I don’t mean to keep them, you know, comfortable and safe in the usual terms.
We mean, how can we strive to be so warm and make them so comfortable off the top so that we can take them somewhere that they never would have expected? Like, how can we build enough trust that we can keep breaking it and then rebuilding it enough that we can take you on an experience that maybe you would not have signed up for right away?
[Veronica Hortigüela]
I was just going to say, yeah, we truly, I mean, I am someone who can feel so uncomfortable with audience interaction. It’s something that I think in theatre we’re aware of how alive it can feel and how exciting it can feel to have this unpredictable moment of how is the audience going to react. And I think sometimes we can be a bit cavalier about introducing something like that, when in reality, if we want people to keep coming back to the theatre, and if we want people to expand their idea of how they might engage with it, we need to take it seriously.
And like, really take it seriously. Consider every step of how you get an audience member, as Annie said, to do something they never would have thought. And I think for us, that meant consciously starting the show.
For example, you know, you might start first with just looking at the audience and then asking a hypothetical question that they might be then invited to answer in their minds. And then you might, you know, take it a little further and ask a real question and just really be paying attention to who is in the room, who is engaging, like, leaning forward warmly, and who is going to need a little more time. And ultimately, I think the audience needs to know that you are never going to make them look more foolish than you will make yourself look.
So I think monks audiences see us do horribly embarrassing things, and that we would never ask them to go any further than we would go ourselves.
[Annie Luján]
But if they do, part of our promise is we’ll go there with you. Yeah. If you want to play to that degree, you will never play alone with us.
We will always, like, match that and try and take it there, too.
[Phil Rickaby]
Audience participation is such a weird thing, because it’s a content warning in the Toronto Fringe Guide. It’s like one of those things, like, you know, swearing, nudity, audience participation is a content warning. And there are people who will see that and they will say, I’m staying as far away as possible from that.
So it is so difficult to create an environment that is that warm. Years ago, there was a show at the Fringe. It was called Little Orange Man by Ingrid Hansen, who’s one of the Merkin sisters.
I don’t know if you know that show. That show didn’t have a lot of audience participation, but it had a bit near the end. And I had never before seen an audience clamoring to participate in the way that she’d built the show so that people were, like, just begging to be, like, it was just, like, holding shoes and, like, doing this thing with the thing.
But it was, like, just, just, like, clamoring to get in on it. And that is so difficult to do. But from what I’ve heard about monks, people are, audiences are ready to go there with you in this show.
[Annie Luján]
We, I mean, that’s that’s what we’ve heard that means so much to us is that people will write comments or say things like, I hate audience participation, and this show made me want to participate. Yeah. And, and I don’t think that’s, you know, like I’ve said, I don’t think that’s a fluke.
I think Veronica and I are really aware of how soul-destroying some audience participation can be and how taxing it can be on an audience. And we wanted to work really hard to kind of and go from the clowning perspective, which is built on audience and use that to to create that human connection so that they do want to participate.
[Phil Rickaby]
As you were building this show and, like, trying to figure these things out, were you bringing people in as guinea pigs? Or, like, how did you decide where the line was for audience participation?
[Annie Luján]
We, at first, for the first few months, no. Veronica and I are also the directors of the show. So a lot of the times one of us would perform and the other one sits because we did not write a script for monks till the week before Toronto Fringe, when our stage manager said, I need a script to do this show.
So this has been completely devised. And so Veronica would perform and then we’d switch. And then at a certain point, a couple months before we performed at the Fringe, we started doing workshop audiences, where we just bring people in, try things, try out games, get their feedback, ask what they wanted more of.
Very informal, which I think we also found really exciting to do kind of informal workshops. But so yes, there definitely, before we performed it, were those workshop test audiences.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
I think part of learning how audience interaction works might also be the willingness to go see shows with audience interaction. The willingness to put yourself in the position of seeing other people attempting it, so that you can understand the mechanisms of how it can work, when it’s not working, and you can consider why. Because, you know, I’ve seen tremendous, charming performers who’ve had an audience right in the palm of their hand, and then something goes wrong, they overstep and they lose their audience.
So as much as I say that sometimes I cringe at it, I do think it just takes seeing it and studying it from that perspective as well. Which, you know, there’s tons of great comedy in the city, including at Sweet Action Theatre, a space that has championed clown and is the home of clown in Toronto. And Annie has trained out extensively, and I’ve trained out as well.
And is full of people taking like huge risks on a Wednesday night for 10 people. So you just have to go and watch.
[Phil Rickaby]
I’m curious about the first time that a fringe audience saw this show. Because I remember working, again, the silent film show, the first time we had an audience in there, we thought it was funny. We had a couple of people come in and see it who also thought it was funny.
But there’s a moment where it was like, we think this is where the first laugh is going to go. And if the audience doesn’t laugh, then we don’t know anything. You know, like there’s that moment of like, is this going to be as funny for them as we think it is?
And fortunately, it was. Did you have any kind of fear the first time you performed this show for an audience that maybe it wasn’t as going to work the way you thought it would?
[Annie Luján]
Totally consumed with doubt, like absolutely wrecked with doubt. Like it was it what I would say we had some of those moments of Yeah, things did not work in the workshops. And some people were like, maybe try it this way, try it this way.
But I think Veronica and I, we had such a profound confidence in this idea. And we knew there was something about this no fourth wall, weird show that just we loved so much that we just trusted. It would find its audience.
And we did our tweaks, we made our changes. And I would say, yeah, that first audience at the Toronto Fringe, when the show was over, and they were beaming at us. And we were just like, in shock that we had the time of our lives doing that for show.
Like I think it was it was shocking to us that it we pulled it off, basically, after eight months of just self funded creation.
[Phil Rickaby]
Veronica, how about you? Similar or what was your experience like?
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Yeah, absolutely. I think there was a real fear that you know, this we may be flying our freak flag a little too high. But I trust Annie’s taste as an artist.
I think Annie is the funniest person I know. And yeah, sorry, girl. I think she’s really funny.
I think she’s really smart. I think she’s a tremendous artist. So I trusted that I loved what we were doing.
And Annie loved what we were doing. So there must be other people out there who would be at least interested in what we were doing. If nothing else, because it’s insane.
And if it did crash and burn, what a thing to watch crash and burn at the Toronto Fringe. And we were Yeah, absolutely shocked. I think I may be even blacked out in the first performance.
I’m not totally sure. The first clear memory I have is during the loadout, just looking at each other and smiling and knowing Okay, well, I think it did. Okay.
I think we did all right. And I think another like reassuring thought was that, like Annie said, we didn’t have a script until a week before the Toronto Fringe. And we’d always known that a part of the show would likely be that things might change, that we might try some things one night, let go of them and try something else another night, which I think in a way, takes a bit of the pressure off.
Because if it doesn’t work tonight, we can try again tomorrow. And we can try to change it. We’re not beholden to a script.
We’re not beholden really to anyone but ourselves and our stage manager, and can continue to try new things, which is also a really freeing thought. Because if it doesn’t work, that’s fine. We’ll try it again tomorrow.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Speaking of change, I’m curious, now that the show has had several iterations, both at the Toronto Fringe, two stages in Toronto, the Edinburgh Fringe, now back to Toronto, how has the show evolved for you? Is it like, how is it or how what kind of ways has it changed in its time of you performing it?
[Annie Luján]
Yeah, I mean, I think in a lot of ways, well, I would say the core is very pure, like, the reason we created the show, the message, so to speak, of the show, the relationship between these two clowns and characters is like the backbone of the show. But we take a lot of responsibility in knowing that our audience comes to us to be surprised, they come to have fun, they come for chaos, and we have people returning four, five, six times. So a show fluid, having each iteration have its own little Easter eggs, surprises, things that you wouldn’t expect.
We really do take the time and very carefully decide, like, what are we going to keep that they saw last time if someone comes back? And what’s something new this week that we can just build, come up with, make a new magic moment for people to? I think, yeah, we definitely feel a lot of responsibility to our audiences to give them that.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
And I think we both enjoy wearing a lot of hats. We both enjoy making things, whether they turn out well or not. So that really aids us in our process, because Annie can come in one day and say, what if there was a giraffe in the show?
And because it’s just the two of us, and we enjoy making things, we can just make it and try. And so that allows the show to be limitless, frankly, in what you can put in the show. If you’re willing to make it, then it can go in the show.
Who knows?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Now that you’re performing at the Tarragon Theatre outside of a festival setting, is there a little bit more breathing room that you could sort of, like, nobody’s turning off the lights, you could go a little over time, right? This is like, there is no punishment, really, for going over time.
If you could sustain the audience, you could keep going. Does that give you more opportunity?
[Annie Luján]
For sure. I mean, it works both ways. At the Edinburgh Fringe, there is an extra urgency to what the monks have to do, because we only have five minutes and we have to get through this.
And so there is, you know, that’s also a little wink at the audience that like, we have to keep moving, you guys. But, you know, there’s also the delight in exactly like you’re saying, no one’s turning off the lights. And one of my favourite rules of clowning is like, if it’s working, and they’re laughing, why would you stop?
And I love that. And for me, that’s like, when I’m faced with that as an opportunity, that’s like my favourite place to play in is how far can we take them if they’re liking something?
[Veronica Hortigüela]
And to your earlier question about how the show has changed through its iterations, obviously, there’s a little bit of restraint to be exercised, because, you know, the people who came to see it at Toronto Fringe on that first performance who loved it, loved that version of the show that didn’t have all those added bells and whistles. And sometimes I need to remind myself that not every audience member has seen the show before. So like Annie said, there are core things that I think remain.
But certainly, knowing that we have the time to clean up afterwards, I mean, put simply allows us to commit to making a bigger mess than we’ve ever made before, because no one is kicking us out. So as long as we are willing to clean up the mess, we say yes to virtually any upping of that ante. And then, technically speaking, the show was designed for Toronto Fringe with very limited cues, and it’s continued to exist in that sort of space.
And this is our first time expanding a bit on the tech of the show. And again, there’s some restraint to be exercised of not, you know, putting too many bows and sparkles on it. But it’s exciting for us as theatre artists to carve out a bit more of what the lighting can do to support the show, and how those languages can speak together, and how the sound can help elevate the show, and then having awareness of when it doesn’t need it.
So that’s been a really interesting part of this process, is having to consider that having access to everything doesn’t mean that we need to use everything. But on the other hand, why wouldn’t we at least try?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Now, the idea of making a bigger mess is very interesting, because now one wonders, is there a chance that like six months after you close, somebody’s going to go into the tarragon, find some lentils and be like, that is our calling card.
[Annie Luján]
We get texts, emails, Instagram DMs from not only people like technicians, but from audience members saying, I didn’t wear this coat for six months after your show, and then showing us the three lentils. Now we, people know, there is no way of hiding that Monks has been in your theatre. We have been there, and the technicians are so hilarious and lovely when they, a couple months later, show us some lentils and say, it was such a nice reminder of your show.
Like the fact that people positively, when they find the lentils, go like, oh, remember this is just really sweet.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Which I like to believe is a credit to the fact that the same way that we commit to the show, we commit to the cleanup. We, you know, we might run out to say hello to a family member in the lobby. But for the most part, we commit to being involved in the cleanup.
We take it seriously. We do our best. But inevitably, there will be lentils in the cracks in the floor and under those risers.
[Phil Rickaby]
I love the description of people like lovingly sort of like finding the lentils later. You know, people are walking, you know, they’re obtaining lentils throughout the show. They’re having interactions.
You’ve mentioned if somebody is willing to go there with you, that you will match them. But I’m curious, with these interactions, the audience participation, is there a moment that stands out as like the wildest interaction you’ve had while doing the show?
[Annie Luján]
I mean, truly so many. I’m trying to think of one that isn’t like directly like a spoiler. Let me think.
I mean, what can I give away? There’s points in the show where audiences are encouraged to like, show us any objects they brought that day, to which, you know, you’re not allowed to bring objects into a monastery. If you’re becoming a monk, you need to give them up.
And some people like there was one day I turned around and a girl had lifted up a pair of red panties. And she was waving it around. And I, I recognized her as someone who had already seen the show.
So in like a very rocky horror way, people have started bringing scandalous objects to the monastery to see what we’re gonna do, you know, just to see how we’re gonna like, deal with them or punish them or like, play with whatever it is. So that’s that’s one thing off the top of my head. A woman’s tried to make out with me.
People have, you know, chased us. You know, crazy things have happened. I’m trying to be intentionally vague.
I know, it’s difficult not to give anything away.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
But audience members have collectively begun chanting things that we did not prompt them to chant and had nothing to do, frankly, with what was happening on stage.
[Annie Luján]
People, we were at a conference-y theater conference thing and people had to leave. And we were chasing them. We got all of the delegates from New Zealand up and screaming there.
There’s Yeah, I mean, we’re agents of chaos and in a lot of ways. Yeah, it’s just it’s so fun. When I get to see the twinkle in people’s eyes as they’re understanding what this show is, that like, they’re like, Oh, I can, I can play too.
I can do this too. And, and yeah, that’s always so exciting for me.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Yeah, it’s really difficult to give any further examples without, without spoiling the show. But I would say that anyone who’s seen Monks, I can guarantee there have been things that have happened at that performance that have never happened again.
[Phil Rickaby]
We speaking of fun and things that your show is running a tarragon theater on Halloween. There are two performances of Monks on Halloween. And I think you guys have some special things planned as well as encouraging audience members to come in costumes.
So tell me about your two Halloween performances of Monks.
[Annie Luján]
Yeah, I mean, it’s lucky that it falls on one of our late night shows because Halloween is on a Saturday this year. So we Yeah, we have a 4pm and I believe a 930 show which we’re so excited about. And we really just want like a full house crazy energy because we do have things planned.
It’s in my mind, it’s going to be like a monks like spooktacular little event. It’s still going to be monks, but it’s just going to be like 20% more spooky and weird and there will be guests. And yeah, I think it for for us, I think it’s such a delight.
Like that was something we were so excited about when we saw that monks landed on Halloween. And since then, we just haven’t stopped talking about what we can do and how we can update the show. And at least for me, I would if it felt to people like a Halloween party, that that’s like my goal.
Like I want it to feel like it’s it’s a Halloween party that everyone’s invited to and it’s like a chance to play in your costumes.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
And like Annie said, we have two shows that evening two performances, including a late night 930. And we were so excited that Tarragon was open to this idea of pushing for a later performance. You know, a traditional theater show in Toronto might start at 730, 8pm.
Monks, it’s just over an hour long. So we wanted to play with pushing it to a later time. We think that from our own experience of attending late night clown shows, it you know, audiences sometimes self sort and late night audiences are interested in engaging in a different way.
And we will offer people a different way to play on those Saturday nights. And we’re so excited for it also to be a way for us to try out some big swings. So I would say to anyone listening who’s thinking, Oh, no, I can’t make it to Halloween Saturday.
That’s such a bummer. But that they’re attracted to the sort of mystery, maybe they’ve seen the show before, I would encourage them to come see the show on a Saturday night because we have some we have some things planned. And we don’t know how they’re gonna work.
Our stage manager’s concerned. You know, she’s saying, when are we gonna put these things out on the day? And we’re like, yeah, it’s gonna have to be.
Yeah, late night.
[Phil Rickaby]
Does your does your stage manager get stressed out about this stuff? Is this are you is this is it’s a torment? Is it is this an ongoing thing?
Or have they learned to roll with it?
[Annie Luján]
Our our stage manager is incredible. Her name is Dylan. Dylan has worked on a lot of like independent shows in Toronto and a lot of shows with clowns.
And we also love the artistic concept of having a stage manager have influence in a show. And so there are points in the show where cues happen, and we don’t know when they’re going to happen. So we also are curious about giving our stage manager some agency to play with us or to call a blackout when when something good happens or something like that.
So absolutely, we are two, you know, raucous monks. And sometimes we go up to Dylan, and we’re like, these are our ideas, can we do them? And she helps us sort out how it’s going to happen.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s great. Now, I, I, in terms of the future of this show, because I think there is a future from everything I’ve heard, is there something happening in the new year for this show?
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Well, yes. There are things happening, some of which, you know, are not within our rights to speak about quite yet. But, you know, we can certainly say that we’re excited to, you know, as much as we’ve loved doing the show in Toronto, where we live, you know, and so it’s incredibly convenient in that regard.
We’re excited to take it to other parts of Canada. We’re so lucky that we’ve gotten to keep doing it in Toronto, but I think we’re itching to take it to different audiences. You know, we dipped our toes into touring in summer of 2025, taking it to Prince Edward County.
And we learned that that audience engaged with the show in a completely different way. It was a completely different kind of audience interaction that was still really rewarding, but just had a different language to it. So we’re excited to continue, you know, meeting new communities and having people visit the monastery and learning from them, again, how to work that audience interaction.
So the monks will be on the road a little bit. I think we can say that. Yeah.
[Annie Luján]
And I mean, there are plenty of things up in the air that, you know, time will only tell how it pans out. But I will say, like, our ambitions, I think we’re allowing ourselves to be really ambitious about this and try and make this show something that, like, not just Canadians are aware of, but that Americans are aware of, that people in the UK are aware of. Like, I, for me, I’m not interested in, like, saying no to where this show can go.
I think I’m really, I’m so excited in the next few years to see where it will, like, call home.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
Yeah, I think, like Annie said earlier, there’s a clown renaissance going on. And we have so many influences in the UK and in the US and from all over the world. It was unbelievable to see how, you know, those the international delegates at that conference engaged with it, again, differently.
And so I think we’re really excited to just add our perspective as to Canadians to what’s going on right now in the world of clown. And that may happen here at home. That may happen by continuing to, you know, dip our toes in other parts of the world.
If anyone wants to have us, they’d love to go to your theatre and make a mess.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, you mentioned how the audience in Prince Edward County was different. And now you’ve played in Toronto a few times, you took it to Edinburgh. I know from my own fringe touring that audiences, every audience in every city is looking for something different.
When you were in Edinburgh, was that audience very different from the Toronto audience? Or, like, what, what were, what, in what way was the difference?
[Annie Luján]
I mean, I would say some shows show these characteristics more than others. It changed so much night to night. I think Edinburgh, they’ve seen clown shows in Edinburgh, they’ve seen to my mind, some of the best of the best they’ve, and some of them are there just to see clown shows.
So they kind of know the rules of participation. And so things we would expect from our Canadian audience 30 minutes in, they were giving us out the door, like they were ready to play, to throw things, to do things that for the first time, we had to be like, okay, they want to play in a way we’ve, we haven’t seen yet, really fast. But that’s also just this pocket of the audience.
So let’s try and give them what they want, while also making sure everyone else is on board. So it was a bit, yeah, it was a bit like, uh, they were a bit peskier, I found in a way that was like, really fun to navigate. It was very new.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
And this was a funny thing that we ran into. Canadian audiences, lovely, you know, people obviously after the show, they see the mess, they want to help. And that’s so lovely.
But never have we had audiences try to help us clean during the show, like we did in Edinburgh. Multiple nights, I mean, it was it was truly a pattern that people would try to get up and start gathering things for us. We were like, oh my god, no, we don’t.
We would never ask that of you. But that was a really funny pattern that that that emerged in Edinburgh.
[Phil Rickaby]
Do you think that comes from their engagement, not just with Clown, but also they know so well that you have so little time to switch over that they’re just like, I’m here for the mess. I might as well help out. Is that part of it?
[Annie Luján]
I definitely, I mean, people who we’ve known in the audience and our stage manager have like reported back to us that when the audiences like clue in on moments that we’re like, kind of secretly encouraging them to make a mess. They’re like voicing like, no, they’re not going to do that. No, no, no.
They’re going to let us do that. No. Like they they all know they’re worried for us in that moment.
And then they go, OK, OK, we’re going to we’re going to start throwing things like we’re going to start playing. But they’re they’re scared for us.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s really quite lovely. I’m wondering, because you guys in Toronto got the patrons pick and so got the extra show. And, you know, that show was a runaway hit.
And so you had the shows of Crows and Theatre Centre. Was that coming at you during Fringe? Were people like coming to you during Fringe talking about the future or did it all come together after?
What was all of that like as excitement sort of grew around the show?
[Annie Luján]
Yeah, it was I think a lot of the offers came like in the weeks following. I think a lot of people just didn’t see it, but heard about the hype and people were like, can I see the archival? Like people were really like, what just happened?
But it was kind of hitting us when like at least some people in theatre who I’d never met, who I respected, or artistic directors, I was like seeing them in our audiences as like the days went on. And I was like, OK, this is clearly reaching people and people are excited about it. So there definitely was a feeling of momentum.
But Veronica and I never expected it to go where it was. Like part of our joke when we were creating it was like, all our decisions were like, what is the unprogrammable decision? What’s the decision we can make that no theatre would want to program because too messy, too chaotic, too whatever?
And because that just that thought delighted us that it only belonged to us and our tastes and our delights.
[Veronica Hortigüela]
But yes, absolutely, as I’m sure any person who’s produced a show at the Toronto Fringe does this as well. We sent out an email blast, crossed our fingers thought, you know, if we’re going through this effort, we might as well see if anyone wants to come take a look. But frankly, we were so occupied with doing the show at the Fringe that it wasn’t necessarily at the forefront of our minds.
And the reality is most people didn’t reply to that email blast until the audiences started building up the word of mouth and the show started selling very well. And then suddenly in the last week, people are trying to carve out time and their schedules to come see the show because, of course, it’s a busy time for anyone in theatre. But yeah, the reality is it was a busy last week in terms of trying to fit people in and get them in to see the show.
Because again, there’s really no pitch we can give of this show that does it justice. And we’re lucky to have a wonderful archival, but again, totally different experience. So we knew that our best shot was for people to see the show for themselves.
And then bizarrely, in the following weeks, we got a couple of very lovely emails of people who were curious as to whether it could translate into another space, which opened up an entire new part of the experience for Annie and I, because we didn’t expect to be adapting the show necessarily that quickly for new spaces, which has been a big learning experience as producers.
[Phil Rickaby]
I was curious if during that last week, you were trying to like, how can we squeeze in another seat for so-and-so and that sort of thing? Because I remember many years ago when the show by the by the couple that did eventually did come from away, they did a show called My Mother’s Lesbian Wiccan Wedding. And there was a point where somebody was like, I know the show is sold out, but is there a seat for David Mirvish?
You know, and then, of course, the answer is yes, somehow. But like, that’s got to be like wild. And I hope that didn’t fall on your shoulders to try to find the seat for the other artistic directors who were like people scrambling to get to see the show.
[Annie Luján]
I mean, look, if the right person came in, we’d make anything happen.
[Phil Rickaby]
Of course, yes.
[Annie Luján]
There was there definitely were like days being like, how many comps do we have left? Like, how can we can we make it work? Can we shift this person around?
Can we do whatever? But it ended up where everyone I think who should have seen the show who wanted to ended up getting in for the most part.
[Phil Rickaby]
Just as we draw to the draw to a close, you were this show is going to come out a little bit before Monks opens at Tarragon. And I am curious what you having done this so many times in front of so many different audiences, but is there something in particular you’re looking forward to about this production of Monks?
[Veronica Hortigüela]
That’s a great question. I mean, point blank, yes. I don’t know if I can say specific things that we’re excited about other than we have such a long run ahead of us.
And luckily, we’ve just tried that at the Edinburgh Fringe. So we we know what it feels like in our bodies to do the show that many times a week. But now we have the luxury of show after show after show, while having access to the resources of just our homes and you know, being in our home territory again.
So what I suppose what I mean to say is, we’re going to get to do the show so many times in such close succession. And it’s just an incredible opportunity to try new things. And I’m just so excited to see how some of those things work out.
I mean, like Annie said, for Halloween, we’re hoping to have some friends maybe join us on stage. We’ll see. Maybe that’s something that can happen throughout the run.
I’m also excited for like the 11th hour idea that Annie is inevitably going to pitch me at 9am on, you know, the day of opening night. And inevitably, it will be the most exciting thing we do. And it will become a permanent fixture of the show.
And I can’t imagine what it is yet. So I’m excited for that.
[Annie Luján]
Yeah, for me, I don’t know, there’s kind of a, because we’re talking about like a homecoming, like, we’ve done this show in Toronto. We’ve gotten, I think, 90% of reviewers who are ever going to review the show to review the show. We’ve taken it internationally.
There’s been so many times where I’ve, you know, Annie has felt like, I have something to prove, I guess, like I have, my whole heart is in the show, and we’re giving it to you. But with this, I’m just, I don’t, I don’t want to feel that way. I just want to play.
Because the hours leading up to Monks every time don’t get easier. I am so scared. I feel so vulnerable.
The five minutes before, I am just like, how did I build that? Like, building it was one thing, having to do this every day is something else. But the second it starts, it’s like, it’s, there’s nowhere else I would ever want to be than than doing that show with people.
So I just can’t wait for the roller coaster that is the moments before and the moments after doing doing the show and everything in between.
[Phil Rickaby]
Amazing. Veronica, Annie, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much. And I cannot wait to actually finally see this show.
[Annie Luján]
We cannot wait to have you at the monastery.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure that you like this episode.
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If you could leave a rating and a review, it would be so helpful for this podcast. My guest next week is Ron Kennell. Ron is a Canadian actor.
He spent 10 years or so at the Stratford Festival. Last year was his debut at the Shaw Festival. I actually went to theater school with Ron.
There’s a couple of old home week kind of interviews that have that came over the last little while with Jacqueline Francis a little while ago. And now Ron Kennell. Ron is such a talented actor, and I was so thrilled to chat with him.
