Ron Kennell on Clown Noses, Dark Places, and Why Comedy Is Harder Than Drama
About This Episode:
This week, Phil sits down with Ron Kennell, Canadian actor, emerging playwright, and former George Brown College classmate, for a wide-ranging conversation that spans decades of theatre-making, international adventure, and the stubborn will it takes to keep going in this industry. Ron has spent nearly a decade at the Stratford Festival, made his Shaw Festival debut, appeared on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and voiced characters in video games. He’s also a writer, with a commissioned play about local Ontario psychic Vera McNicol and several screenplays on the go.
Guest: 🎠Ron Kennell
From CBS’s Star Trek to CBC’s Sort Of. From the Stratford Festival to the Fadjr Theatre Festival in Iran. From touring – kids show in Quebec’s Arctic Circle, to playing a drag queen in the legend of George McBride at the Arts Centre in Vancouver. From voice acting in Far Cry (Primal) to writing feature film Dr Cabbie. Ron had had a varied career developed and sustained through his roots in the theatre.
Connect with Ron
📸 Instagram: @resident_artisan
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Transcript
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. 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’ll get to my guest this week in just a moment.
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That’s enough business for now. Let’s get into the show. My guest this week is Ron Kennell.
Ron is a Canadian actor who has spent maybe about 10 years at the Stratford Festival. He’s been in the Shaw Festival. He has been in some of my favourite television.
He’s been on Star Trek Strange New Worlds. He has been a voice actor in video games. And also, Ron is a former classmate of mine.
Ron and I were at George Brown College together in the Performing Arts program. And so it was a real treat to get to talk to Ron. And you will enjoy it, too, because here’s my conversation with Ron Kennell.
Ron Kennell, thank you so much for joining me. This is a real pleasure. I you know, there’s so many things that I so many topics to start with.
But I think we should start with what are you up to these days? Well, thank you for asking. I’m just I just finished shooting on a series called Sheriff Country, which was very fun. I had a great time on that.
And I am I just got denied funding from Canada Council and Telefilm for a movie that I wrote. So I am now working at a bar called Rippy and Vine, which I really love, and a shop called Janet Hill Studio in Stratford. So I am making my way through the tourist industry here at Stratford and happily working at a wine bar and a really incredible arts art studio by the Janet Hill.
She’s just amazing. Wow. You last year, I mean, you’ve spent, I think, almost a decade at the Stratford Festival and the company there.
That’s right. Last year you were at the Shaw Festival. That’s right.
Yeah. For the first time, for the first time ever. What was it like making that jump? Well, it was fascinating.
I got to work with Peter Hinton, who also brought me to the Stratford Festival. In 2003, so there’s something about working with Peter that is always very comforting. It’s always very challenging.
And so I knew going into it that it would be a challenge. I’d never done a Shaw piece before. And so I was awakened to a brand new style, a brand new way of working.
And of course, Peters is such an explorative. He is such an incredible resource of information, an encyclopedia. And so it was really exciting.
And to be able to work with Patrick Galligan and Fiona Byrne, all these and all the amazing artists that were in the company, some that I knew. My friend Sepehr was also there and some that I didn’t know. Some really wonderful artists who have become fast friends.
And I’m really grateful to know them. But yeah, it’s it’s a very different place, even from Stratford. It’s much smaller.
It’s got a lot of heart, but it’s it’s very isolating in many ways. You can see there’s a lot of families there and there’s a lot of families within the company. And it requires that sense of.
Being folded into yourself, but I enjoy the work. Work was great. We did a comedy as well.
We did tons of money. And yeah, it was a joy and just completely different. Same work ethic, obviously.
Same great work from the people, but just a different sort of town to be in. It’s a smaller festival, too. There are fewer shows than at the Stratford Festival.
Yeah, definitely. I think there were, you know, maybe 10 shows last year at the Shaw. And there’s always tons of cabarets, though.
And there’s always something going on. They really do take care of that. And in fact, we had to host evenings as company members, like an open mic night and stuff like that, which was exciting and fun and something that we don’t really get to do here.
So at Stratford. So, yeah, it was wonderful. What did you do for your cabaret? We had an amazing number of acts come in.
So we we basically hosted them. We had Eponine Lee come in. She was actually one of the co-hosts with me.
We had T.C. who played and sang. Travis Situ, you know, like. Wonderful artists.
Yeah, everyone that that was just a, you know, we approached everyone. We had some dancers come in and we just had an incredible lineup of of just unstoppable talent that just gave and gave and gave. And so they got to show things that they wouldn’t normally have gone to do during the season.
And it was a late night thing. So really great with so many acts that it was it stopped being about really an open mic night because that we had so many acts prepared. We only had one hour.
So it was really hard to fit everybody in, but it was wonderful. You’ve done in your career, you’ve done a lot of work. And one of the things that jumped out to me was you did product with Modern Times, did a production of Macbeth.
I think you’ve done Macbeth twice with Modern Times. Correct. Yeah.
And one of them was performed at a at a theatre festival in Iran. What what was that like taking taking that show to Iran to perform? You know, it was such it was such a privilege to be able to do that, to go with Soheil, to go with Modern Times and to perform there. We performed at the University of Tehran, which was a big, big source of theatre and a huge hub of of learning for theatre in Tehran.
And of course, there are many censors. There are many ways in which theatre is censored. There are also many ways that artists get around censorship and tell stories with very subliminal messaging in ways that.
It really requires an insight into playwriting, but also in the way of of telling a story, the symbiotic sort of way of of the symbols that come out of it. It was fascinating culturally. Of course, males and females are not meant to touch skin to skin as part of their religious belief.
And in our story, the porter carried Lady M as she was dying on his on his back. And so when as she was dragged off the stage, there were some people that were really upset. They went to the the people that were running the theatre festival and said, this has to be stopped.
So he’ll parse is touching the skin of one of the female actors. And of course, because we were only performing over two days, the leader of the festival or the person who was in charge said, oh, I’m sure Mr. Parsa wouldn’t come back to Iran and violate our customs. And I’m sure you must have been mistaken.
I’m sure you’ll find if you go back again that the person that he’s actually carrying is another man. And so it’s man to man. And knowing full well that the person would probably never be able to go back and see the show and and then therefore allowing us to get away with telling the story in the way that we always had.
So that kind of subversive, that kind of way of sort of allowing things. I suspect that if he had been caught, you know, sort of pulling the wool over the censor’s eyes, then maybe the the organizer himself would have gotten in trouble. But certainly we were shielded by any of that sort of stuff by being guests of the, I guess, of the regime, truthfully.
And we were the first theatre company to perform in Iran. First English theatre from North America to perform in Iran since the revolution. So it was a very powerful time and a very life changing experience for me.
I really loved it. Did was there any trepidation going over for that? I mean, being the first English speaking company to go there since the revolution, was there any trepidation and going travelling there and performing? Well, we had been there the year before we did Aurash, which is a Persian sort of Persian tale from the Shahnameh, which is the Book of the Kings, which everyone in Iran knows the stories of the Shahnameh. So what was exciting about that is we were taking a very stylized version of a very celebrated poet and author, Bahram Beyzaie.
His art. So everybody knew the story we were telling. The fact that we were doing it in English led to some sort of questioning.
Why would you come to from Canada and do this story in English when we know it so well ourselves? So that was fascinating. But once we started doing it, once they saw how we were telling the story and the. The poet poetic license that we took with it, but that was supported by the work that and in the way that it had been written, we were celebrated, we were feted.
It was really a wonderful celebration of cultural exchange and just sharing amazing theatre. You know, people, we were probably in a theatre that seated 150 and it was jam packed with maybe 250 people. It was just that popular and people wanted to see it.
And we only had four shows, so two one day and two the next day. Incredible. And when you’re travelling like that to do two days of performance, how soon before the show are you arriving in Iran? Like, are you jet lagged when you’re performing that show? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yes. It’s funny you should ask.
Yes, I learned about a lot of things about Iran within the first two days. And we were in doing our tech and then we were rehearsing what we could and then running the show. We had to build some of our set, to be honest.
I think the day after we arrived. So we were very jet lagged and and I didn’t feel that great. To be honest, my stomach was very upset.
And so it was it was hard to make that adjustment. But we did it. We made it.
And within a very short time, we were, of course, finished. And so it was a really beautiful thing. And then we, of course, got to go to other shows and be part of the festival and see theatre being performed from all around the world, including the Berliner Ensemble was there.
There was a company from Turkey. And one of the things they did that was so fascinating and just have to touch on this since you asked me about Iran is they did a show where the women were wearing the hijab, which is traditional. They have to wear to cover their hair.
And so at one point, you know, they were complaining about how difficult it is and how it’s so oppressive and awful and terrible. And so they just at one point, they all grabbed their hijabs and they threw them in there, the scarves. And their their hair was then exposed.
And the audience was like, oh, oh, my God, this is terrible. You just can’t do that. And then they each grabbed their hair again and they pulled it off.
And it was a wig. And underneath was another hijab. So the layers of storytelling were ran rich in that country and in that festival.
It’s a sort of an insight into the way of, you know, storytelling that we don’t even have to imagine. But what allows the creative source to sort of bring forward in those kind of situations. So, yeah, it’s amazing.
Yeah. Amazing. Constraints are a really interesting thing to deal with.
They force you to be so creative in a way that I think, you know, some people will say we don’t have enough money to do this thing. And, you know, we you can have like so many special effects on stage, but sometimes the most effective thing is just the human imagination. Absolutely.
And they’re the most simple. That was one of the things that working with Soheil sort of allowed us to explore. And in that show, but also in Aarish when, you know, Aarish had to climb a mountain.
How do you depict that? Well, one of the authors had a flag and the flag, which was in Aarish’s back as he was climbing, was represented then by a little flag in someone’s hand who was carrying the flag up the mountain. And so it just kind of raised itself. And it was beautiful, beautiful, simple storytelling and done in just such a. Elegiac sort of way, I loved it.
Is there something that you learned about storytelling in that festival that you carried back with you? Well, one of the things I think the biggest thing that I learned is that I had a naive view of where Iran would be in their theatre and in their storytelling, because I believed, of course, what I heard in the media and it being backwards and it being, you know, not progressive and not forward thinking. But the truth is, I realized that when I saw guns on stage, like almost every show I saw had a gun. And so it was somewhat melodramatic.
And I thought, oh, this is so. Ha is so soap opera. But then what I realized is that the way things were used, the way these sort of violence was used, Iran has seen it all.
They have been there. They have. They’re they’re reinventing the wheel, essentially, to create their stories.
So we, in fact, are in our early stages of learning. That was my biggest sort of bring back from Iran was that don’t be too cocky about your culture or where you are on the on the run, because those who have had oppression by their government or by another country, I think some of probably the most incredible art right now is coming out of Ukraine because they like, like Churchill said, if we’re not fighting for the arts, what are we fighting for? There is a real sense of having to create in a sense of despair and loss. And so I really I was really heartened by that and realized that we have a long way to go.
And we’re very privileged not to have faced that kind of those kind of fears and that kind of danger to have to explore that. But I was really grateful to learn that. But there’s something about when you have I mean, you have to be really clever under an oppressive regime, right? You have to say what you mean without obviously saying what you mean.
Right. You have to. So you have plausible deniability.
You can say, oh, that’s not what we were saying. You misunderstood. Exactly.
And everybody can be like, OK, fine, we’ll go with that because it wasn’t overt enough. So you have to be really clever, which allows you to be a little bit more sophisticated. Yeah.
Audience will know what you’re saying. Yeah. But they have plausible deniability, too.
Exactly. It’s the joy of it. And you can see it etched on all the faces.
You know, the people know that the art that they’re doing, they’re privileged to do. And it is very well supported. And the people going to the theatre were were really incredible.
You know, the thing is, they were answering their cell phones in the audience, which I found quite fun. And I don’t know what they were saying, but I’m sure it’s all of those things about, oh, yes. No, I’m seeing a show.
Oh, oh, no, not very good. No, you know. Like, you know, someone would in ours, but there’s just a different way of taking in in the art, too.
There’s less of a hoity toity. It’s just a part of life. It’s not like life doesn’t stop because you go to the theatre.
You still answer your phone and you still have your, you know, things that you have to do. So I found that fascinating. That is fascinating.
It’s funny with cell phones. I was working at the Ed Marvis Theatre for a number of years as an usher. And one of my favourite things was watching people react to their phones going off, because there’s really two reactions.
One person freaks out. They’re going through this with my phone, my phone’s going off. What do I do? Ah, they have this panic attack.
And then there’s the other side where somebody sits there stone faced like that is my phone going off. And they look straight ahead. And you’re signing your flashlight, trying to get their attention.
And they’re like, I don’t know what that person is doing. My phone’s not going off. It is.
It is fascinating. And here you are in Iran. Their phone goes off.
They’re just like, I’m seeing a show. Oh, no, no, no, no. I can’t talk now, you know? Exactly.
It’s just a different. Yeah, totally different way of appreciating. You live in Stratford now.
I do. You were born in Stratford. I was.
And you’ve worked in Stratford. You’re born in Stratford. You’ve worked at Stratford.
You live in Stratford now. How like when you started working at Stratford, how did that change your relationship to the town? Well, it’s funny because a lot of my family had never been to the festival before. So for me, finally landing here and ironically, it was after my second year in Iran, right after doing Macker’s, I got a message from our director in the airport in Tehran saying, you have to call your agent.
There’s an offer from Stratford. So that was the offer that Peter Hinton gave me to come and be in the Swan. So it changed my life because I met my partner, Michael, who’s a stage manager.
That was one of the biggest sort of changes in my life. And one of the greatest graces that came into it was was that that happened and it changed everything. We bought a house.
He’s now celebrating his 30th season at the festival. Wow. And he’s fond of saying he was very young when he started.
But yeah, so it changed a lot. And a lot of my family has since come to see shows and started appreciating more theatre. But it’s it’s you know, it is very much a theatre town that is reluctant.
The town itself is reluctant. We have a bigger community of artists that stay now through the year. But for a while, it closed shop at the end of October and didn’t open again until the end of February.
So that has certainly changed. There’s a broad, bustling community of artists. But yeah, I feel like I’m home.
Like, I also feel when I’m not working here, it’s hard being here because you know what’s happening. You know, everyone’s on the cruise ship and you’re just not on board. Like you’re at the you’re waving at the at the pier and you know, they’re going to have fun.
You know, they’re going to complain about how much work they’re doing. And you know that they’re going to be in good shows and they’re going to be in stinkers sometimes. That’s just the nature of the way it goes.
So, yeah, it’s a wonderful place to be and great to have so many friends here. But it’s also challenging sometimes when you’re working in a store and someone recognizes you and say, oh, you’re not at the festival this year or someone who comes to the festival and you see them while you’re seeing a show and they say, oh, are you here? And you say, no, not this year. And they’re like, oh, their disappointment is like almost bigger than your own.
You know, there are other things to do in the world and in life. So, yeah, that’s there are challenges and benefits. But, you know, the big change is coming next year.
So that’s exciting. I mean, this is one of the things. Yeah, there’s a lot that’s changing.
This is Anthony Cimolino’s last year as the artistic director, who’s a new artistic director coming in starting next season. Yeah. Although I imagine the next season is not yet his season.
The next season is his season, actually. Oh, really? Yes. The next season is totally chosen by Jonathan Church.
OK. Who I haven’t had the privilege of meeting, but I look forward to meeting. I’ve done a reading of a play that he was there for.
So he got to see me do that, which is good. And he seems, by all accounts, a very nice fellow. He’s obviously very intelligent, has a great grasp and huge reach in the theatre community.
So I’m very excited to see what comes next. And for, you know, for to see what comes next for Anthony to see when he moves on, where where he lands and what he does. So I do want to come.
I want to come back to your being at like born in Stratford, growing up in Stratford. OK, because I want to talk a little bit about about we went to we went to George Brown College together. And there is a there is a story about your audition for George Brown, which I believe is that you you didn’t audition the first time when you went to go and audition for for George Brown, right? Is that is that is that correct? That is correct.
Yes. I was doing a show at the Queen’s Inn. It was called Stude Prunes and Pickled Herrings.
It was about Shakespeare’s life and a bunch of us little madrigals. Richard Bone was in the company. And so was Cherry also in Richard’s Richard’s ear.
And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go to George Brown. In the end, I was accepted to York. I was accepted to Windsor.
I wasn’t accepted to the National or Ryerson. And I kind of got my nose out of joint. And I was like, well, I could go to university and just, you know, just be done with it.
So when it came time for my George Brown audition, I was like, I don’t want to be I don’t want to get another no from a sort of conservatory. So I didn’t show up. And then Richard and Jerry said to me when I arrived back to Stratford, they were like, how did it go? Oh, I’m so excited.
Tell me all about it. And I was like, oh, well, OK, I don’t know. I don’t think anything will come of it.
You know, I don’t think it’s going to happen. And then they were like, oh, that’s that’s crazy. You know, it’d be great there.
And I’m so I think it was probably Richard who reached out and said, we’re surprised that Ron wasn’t chosen. And then that’s when it came up that Ron didn’t show up for his audition. Mortified.
And I said, yeah, and I told them why. And they you know, they were very gracious and they understood. But then they arranged for me to have another audition, which was really nice.
So I went in and and actually did it this time. And Peter Wylde said when I got in, he said, well, you sang beautifully. That’s the only reason you got in.
So anyway, he never really fell in love with me until after, like until I was at Stratford for a couple of years. And then he came to see some shows and said, well, you’re doing it. You know what is I mean, it’s funny.
I don’t know if you found this, but leaving theatre school is really a weird experience of like when you do a show in a way. You’re I mean, I found that I was like really litigating my time at theatre school. Like, would the head of acting appreciate what I’m doing? And it took like five years before I was like, you know what? Fuck that.
Yeah. I don’t need I’m not here to impress him anymore. I know it was hard.
It was hard because the expectation was that you were only successful if if he liked you. Yeah, it was it was really not a healthy thing. And when I see or hear about the changes that have happened since, I’m like, yeah, it was it was not a very positive environment to be in.
I don’t think that I don’t think that we were that our our particular school as a conservatory was alone in that. I think that that’s largely what conservatory programs were like. There was a lot of I’ve said it before, but, you know, we’re going to build you.
We’re going to tear you down and then we’re going to build you back up. And they spend a lot of time tearing you back down and they don’t bother to build you back up. But then they’re like, good luck in your theatre career.
That’s right. What I find, though, to tell is that there’s such a. There’s such another part to that, because I’m grateful to have had the honesty and the sometimes barbarity, I suppose you could say, of being told the truth, the the the baldness of that, because it allowed my expectations not to get too far removed. And I just knew that I still have the feeling very much that I have to.
Leave my leave my work at the door, leave my own stuff at the door and do the work. And that has stood me in very good stead, I have to say. I still feel that there are some benefits to that kind of theory.
And it’s not that you don’t have your own. Experiences, your own life, your own fears, all of those things, but leaving them at the door is really helpful in the room because it allows you to focus in a way that creates a discipline and practice, I suppose, like anything. And so, yeah, I’m conflicted quite often.
I sometimes hear or I’m involved with with people who don’t have that kind of discipline or way of working. And it’s hard because, yeah, we spend a lot of time waiting. And God knows we had a lot of classes where people in George Brown, where people were losing it.
And it’s like, oh, God, am I supposed to do that? Yeah. Am I supposed to be freaking out right now? Because am I not breathing deeply enough to touch touch on the pudding to be able to cry like what’s going on? Yeah. Um.
So, yeah, you you’re always in a scarcity mode thinking you’re the fraud, that you’re not you’re not good enough or you’re not deep enough. And and then when you have, you know, trying so desperately to make the instructors love you. It’s it’s an impossible sort of situation.
So, I mean, you can’t even really do that, though, right? You can’t even like if your goal is to make the instructor love you. First off, it’s the wrong thing to be doing in theatre school. You should be just trying to do the work.
And yet it is set up in such a way that like you are predisposed to be like, my way to succeed here is to make that guy really like me. And then you realize it doesn’t matter a damn. No.
And but it takes a while to get there. Right. It takes a while.
And then there are weird things that happen. I remember doing one of the first Keystone theatre shows. We did this silent film style play, Bell of Winnipeg and Richard Bone came or sorry, Peter Wilde came to see it.
And was that the last man on Earth? That was the Bell of Winnipeg was the first one. The last one, Man Earth was actually our second show. Oh, our first show was like this massive two act projection, like a big epic thing.
And Peter Wilde came to see it. And at the end of the show, he said to Richard Bone. In a real city, this show would never close.
Wow. You know, and I was like, oh, OK. Wow.
And then after he saw the last man on Earth, he gave me like he legitimately was like, this was wonderful. And I was like, who are you? Yeah, it’s not wild. Yeah, it’s so weird.
It’s so wild here. But again, it’s that it’s that relationship, the authority student relationship, which is so difficult to break out of. I had the privilege of watching Peter working with Brian Bedford.
And that was very interesting, because Peter was invited to be dramaturg on Our King Lear. And so seeing him in the world changed my view as well of him a little bit. And it was very rewarding and very, very rich.
And yeah, I never really 100 percent felt like that. You know, that thing of like, I never really felt like, oh, he really liked my choices or he really loved my work in this. But I think he respected that I I did the work and I worked hard at what I did.
So I like that. And that’s what I take away from it. And I love that he was always just so passionate, like just no one that was more expressive.
He never he never stopped until he died. Like he was always. Yeah, he’s still teaching and still going to see as many things as he could.
So I never it never stopped. You wrote a play recently. Yes, I have been dabbling.
I I was commissioned by Blythe to write a play about a psychic named Vera McNicol. She lived around Millbank, Ontario, which is not far from Stratford. And she became notorious.
She’s she still is notorious. We we had a little bit of a reading, just excerpts from it. And and we were doing also sort of a ooga booga reading to see if we would pick up any electromagnetic frequencies and whatever.
So, you know, our EMF machines, a little paranormal investigation while we were doing it. And it was fascinating to have people bring their stories and talk about what it was like going to see her and the predictions that they gave and the ways that they were able to get answers from what from from her, I guess, psychic predictions or from her ability to to go through the cards, she read cards and she just read normal playing cards. Oh, that’s one of the fascinating things about her.
And she had sticks, too. And I’ve never seen the sticks. I’m I’m really desperate to find those.
But she’s an endlessly fascinating person who is, you know, local legend. And her books are really wonderful. There’s like six of them, which are kind of biography books.
And she a lot of them just tell relate the letters that people wrote to her. Oh, Vera, it’s so nice to have a friend. I was so depressed before I met you.
And now I found ways and I have a better relationship with my child. Thanks to you. It’s just amazing stuff.
So I was fascinated. I wrote a little play about her. And it has to do with someone seeking, you know, truth about what it means to be psychic and all of that stuff.
And so it is basically it brings Vera back for one more night to to sort of through through the studying that the researcher is doing to bring her back one more time to fight the devil or as I call him, the well-heeled business man. Same thing. How did the how did the commission come about? How did writing become something you wanted to try out? Well, I told I told Gil that my grandmother had gone to see Vera McNichol and there should be a play about her.
And he said, Absolutely, there should. Why don’t you apply for, you know, one of the what is it like an art maker? What is the grant called? I forget exactly. But there was a way to apply to the OAC to and to sort of link yourself with the theatre.
And then, oh, I recommend a grant. That’s what it is. And so through the recommender grant, I was I was given a small grant to be able to write it.
And and yeah, it was great. The archives here has so much information and even her shoes. Some of her playing cards were there.
So you’re able to touch and be around all of the things that she she had and some of her autograph books. She had tons of autograph books, which were endlessly fascinating to people writing little poems. And so I found it’s a it was a real search of someone’s.
True life to find a sort of magical edge, you know, and of course, she wasn’t always right. That’s the great thing is that her humanity comes through in those moments and probably the moment where she was at the height of her notoriety. It was a missing woman in Texas, and Vera swore up and down that this young woman was alive.
And so the search happened. It became very newsworthy and it became sort of a thing that that happened very publicly. And while she was able to predict other things and solve other murders, this one seemed to elude her.
And it was the one thing that she was kind of remembered for because it was international. And it sort of plays in a little bit into that. And kind of like it’s I called it the devil’s in the details because as a child, she always feared the devil.
And it was something and she was always told that she had the devil in her for being able to predict things. Even as a child, she was saying incredible things that came true. And so the devil’s in the details are like, are we the sum of of of our mistakes? Like, is it just the one mistake we make after making so many great predictions or so many great truths or so many victories? Are we defined by that one that sort of eludes us? And yeah, I was I was really fascinated by that.
So that’s the kind of tack I took on it. And it was very rewarding, I have to say, because I don’t. Reckon myself to be a playwright.
I have great respect for playwrights, but a playwright’s imagination. Has an endless palette, and I can’t go there for me. I can write a screenplay because I know where I need the scene to be set.
But if you’re on stage. You have every possibility, every moment, every every lighting cue could be a different sort of you could be in a different place. And it kind of overwhelms me.
And I don’t I don’t think of it as specifically. And maybe that comes from my real desire and my real joy. I have with doing physical theatre or representational things because I can live in it or I can interpret it.
But I’m not very good at creating it. I mean, it makes perfect sense. I always I mean, the one of the things that I would say, I mean, you wrote a play.
You know, as far as I’m concerned, somebody who writes a play, they’re a playwright. And so, you know, you get to you get to you get to have that. And you get to get to say that be that.
For me, I think one of the things I like, I’ve seen a lot of been a lot of play readings, like little like excerpt things. And a lot of things that people do early on when they’re starting to write a play is they write it like a movie. And so their scenes are very short.
Right. And one of the constraints that that that that eventually you learn is, oh, I have to like we’re not going to be bringing in a new set every three minutes here, so I have to find like a constraint that keeps everybody here for a while. Again, constraints like forces you to be in like one space for as long as you can be and have to resolve or do something.
So it’s an it’s a really interesting exercise in just like, what can these people in this place do? How can I keep them here? Which can be a lot of fun to to play with. Yeah. One of the things I was thankful for is that so much humour came out of the playwriting.
And I was grateful for that because a lot of my other scripts, like my screenplays and things tend to be on the dark side. Like I really am able to hook into. Yeah, some some some of the darker questions that we have, like, for example, I’ve written and it has become many things.
And I suppose it could be a play, too. But it is a I was wondering what ever happened to Charlie Brown. And I started writing.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was about like what was what was Charlie Brown doing in 2008 when we were on the campaign of hope? And Obama was on the horizon. And Proposition eight in the states was stopping gay people from getting married. And, you know, the civil sort of the Supreme Court had yet to rule on that.
And and the war in Afghanistan was happening. And the housing bubble happened. And all of the you know, all of the industry shut down like the banks failed.
It was huge, huge, huge time. And so I set this war story called Good Grief about Pigpen going to war and and finding himself in Afghanistan where the dirt made sense for him. And he became a translator and he became he understood and he learned Arabic and he learned Dari.
And he became sort of a scholar of of their poetry and their art and sort of fell in love with the culture. And what does it mean when you fall in love with the culture of your so-called enemy? Hmm. So and you’re in you’re working for the army, if you know the American the American army.
So it was I go to those darker places. They really appeal to me in a sense that I want to reconcile something. So I want it to be hard and then I want to find peace with that.
And so, of course, Pigpen spoiler alert in my version, Pigpen dies and his and his friends are all left with this book of his poetry. And some of it’s written in Dari or in Persian. And some of it is written in Arabic.
You know, like they have to decipher who they are through his writings because he’s the one they didn’t know very well. And and they even feel more isolated from him, given that he, you know, had all this experience of being in Afghanistan and falling in love with the enemy or whatever that means to them and to each individual person. That means something very different in in my version of of how that was.
So, of course, we could never do the play or the movie because the IP of Charles M. Schultz would never allow us to use them. But, you know, there’s no saying that a bunch of friends couldn’t have gone through the same thing who live in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and just happened to have had a dog that they grew up with and that kept them all together. I mean, let’s face it, there there’s there there’s there are a lot of pieces of of of of literature of film that started as something else as fan fiction of something, you know, and they go on right on to be something else.
We don’t have to limit ourselves. There is a precedence, too. I mean, there’s God Sees Dog.
There’s You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which were not written. You know, we’re not Charles M. Schultz’s IP. Yeah, but it’s interesting that in terms of like screenplay and things like that, you lean towards the darker side.
But, you know, this there was a humour in the play that you wrote. But I find it interesting because you’re a funny person. You’re a funny guy.
You’re a very witty and and and always funny to be around. And yet we have this thing in in in in Canada, especially where when we’re programming theatre. We don’t program a lot of comedies.
Yes, it is a problem. Why do you think that is? I mean, I have my opinion. I wonder what do you what is what is your reason for that? Well, so I think we don’t do them because they’re too hard.
And I think too few people know how to bring that out of people. And so if you’re not predisposed to comedy or to to that sort of exploration, you don’t get you don’t get to do it. You know, you don’t get to see it.
And so one of the things also is that we have a wealth of platforms like, you know, SCTV and all of those legacy sort of comedy venues, you know, Second City. Yuck, yucks, all of us. I think those comedians are always.
Considered funny and they do commercials and they get amazing TV shows, and we do have incredibly funny comedians and sketch artists. And don’t get me wrong. And it is just as legit.
But I think sometimes actors or classical theatre misses out on things because it’s often the carved out as the landscape for comedians. And so, yeah, I think but but mostly I think people fear it. I think there’s less fear outside of Canada.
But within the idea of doing comedy, it’s almost like it’s not worth it. And I think it’s completely worth it. And I think we need it right now.
You know, we need to laugh. And so there’s any different sort of view of of what it means or how it’s interpreted, but real masters of comedy. We need to get back to like, you know, when our pals were doing Commedia dell’Arte and and really finding and stretching the boundaries of where that can go.
They were really onto something. And it’s an exciting sort of thought to to see where that can go now. Also, I did write a screenplay that got made called Dr. Cabbie, which was quite funny at times.
It wasn’t exactly my edit in the end, but I was really proud of of the fact that it happened. And yeah, it was quite funny. So I was grateful for that.
Yeah. I think one of the things that that we tend to do in Canada in the theatre is a lot of theaters feel they need to program work that is, quote unquote, important. Yeah.
And comedy doesn’t seem important. It doesn’t seem like it’s literature. It doesn’t seem it seems like a lower form.
And because of the the the seeming need to be like, I know the theatre that we do is so important that we forget that it’s also important for people to laugh. And in fact, you can kind of say more and affect more when you’re making people laugh. I think you’re absolutely right.
Yeah, I think I think that reason alone is why people are afraid of it. You know, also, they don’t want to fail. Right.
It’s easier. It’s easier to be dramatic. Right.
And I mean, comedy is linked so closely to tragedy that it’s just, you know, one thought away, literally. And if you remember our clown class with Jim Warren. Mm hmm.
And I don’t know if you remember some of the some of the really funny things that happened, but those were some of the best times that I think our class came alive because we were we were in it and it was so honest and so pure. And yeah, Don Haddad, especially his fuck. Yeah.
I mean, the funny thing is that that that the thing about about clown, the people who haven’t studied it don’t quite know if they don’t haven’t figured out is that nose hides you enough that you could be so vulnerable. And it is verging on on tragedy, sometimes verging on tears. And yet it’s it can be so funny because of the vulnerability that if you were to take that nose off, you can’t have it.
It’s incredible. I think it’s a really great lesson. And sometimes, you know, when you are I think it’s important when you are playing something that’s serious or important.
Put the nose on. I mean, it is it’s there in anything that is very serious. There need to be moments of of levity.
Right. And it has to balance out. Right.
And also, I always think that in a comedy, you should have some weight to it at some point, like it has to mean something. Yeah, you have to take them somewhere. Exactly.
Otherwise, you’re just doing sketch comedy. Right. And which is fine.
But I think theatre needs to go someplace to give it to give what the laughs some reason. I think it does really need catharsis. You know, ultimately, both both do.
I think you’re right. Right about that. Yeah.
Yeah. I saw you on Star Trek, Strange New Worlds a while back, and it did take me quite a bit to realize that it was you because you were under a few layers of of prosthetics in that particular episode. I would be remiss if I if I did not be the nerd that I am and talk about going on that show.
Was it was was it a lot of work? Was it like what was it like? Like jumping into the like I think the first season of that particular show. It was. Yeah, it was the first season.
It was the fifth episode. Yeah. It was a highlight of my career because I had watched the original series with my dad.
I’d auditioned for Discovery a number of times. I thought I am never going to get on this show because like after five times, I just thought it’s impossible. It was Lisa Parison was casting and I love her and we we got on very well.
But I was like, shit, this is just not going to happen. And I even got to know some of the cast and they were wonderful, but it just wasn’t happening. So when I got on the audition for Strange New Worlds, I was like, oh, again, you know, here we are in.
I forget what it was called. It wasn’t even for Star Trek that they had a secret name for it. Right.
Of course. Yeah. Golden Harvester, Golden Honey or something.
And but I could tell by the sides, I was like, this is something about this. So I auditioned, of course, sent it out. And I, surprising to me, like, I got it and it wasn’t until I received the email that said, welcome to Starfleet.
I was done that to me was like I was on the floor, I was crying, I was like. Yeah, it’s still it’s still very emotional. Of course.
It’s crazy. It’s it shouldn’t be, but it was crazy emotional. So then when I got it and I was reading the script and I’m like, oh, my God, I’ve scenes with Spock.
Are you kidding me? And Captain Pike and, you know, the yeah. And the whole new season of of people and some of whom had knew less about Star Trek than I did when I was on set with them. I was informing them.
And so when I got to stand on the bridge of the Enterprise and just be like, this is insane. It was a very special experience for me. And I love being able to play because I knew they were going back to a way of of being like the original series.
It was episodic. I thought of, you know, all the kind of crazy ways people interacted on that show with the people. And I knew in the end that they joined the Federation.
And so I became a Federation captain. And that to me, I was like, that blows my mind. Like, I thought I’d be a red shirt.
Yeah, for sure. I’d be on the away team. Yeah.
And I’d be the first one to die, you know. So it was a very proud moment for me. I love it.
When they started playing the original series. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Like at the end of my scene, when we unfurl the flag.
Yeah, I was like, this is unreal. So gratefully, I got to go back and play just the slightest little part on another episode in season three. Yeah, that was season three.
And so I got to see everybody again and they got to say, great work. That was amazing. You did you did such a great job and it looked so good.
That was very rewarding, too, because you seldom get to do that. And, you know, I got to be a Rongovian again, which was very powerful. Yeah, I loved it.
Yeah, I don’t I don’t see like I think I think people who grew up with it, you know, it was on TV every Saturday or Sunday back in the day. It was the show that was on in the afternoon. And it was a thing that we watched, you know.
How can you not like nerd out and love it when you have the opportunity? Remember the Next Generation was on during theatre school. I remember that because I remember I remember when it got good. Yes, because I watched it in the first couple of seasons when it was not good.
Yeah, that’s true. There were there were some really questionable episodes near the beginning and then when it got good and we would we would be in theatre school and talking about it and and and teachers talking about it, because, of course, Patrick Stewart, as a Shakespearean actor, doing all of these things was quite the quite the the the example a lot of the times. It was crazy.
Yeah. So, yeah, I’m really grateful for that. That was a that was a real gift.
One of the things that is. I mean, the industry is it can be can be rough, you know, we graduated at George Brown with, yeah, 13, I think it was 13, wasn’t it? Yeah. From 31.
Yeah. From 31 people who started in first year. And when I look at that, that list of people, there are very few people who are still doing it.
Some people stopped after a year, some people after a year or two, because the being an actor, being in the industry takes a lot out of you. It takes a lot of there’s a lot of disappointment. There’s a lot of a lot of moments where you just like stop.
You wonder, like, like, yeah, should I just get an office job or like just like all these things, all the questions that we ask to what do you like? What do you call the reason for your longevity, the fact that you’re still doing it? Did you ever get discouraged and think about leaving? Oh, often. You mean today? How many times today? I think that it’s something you can’t avoid. I think that it’s just one of those things.
And I don’t think it ever changes. Like, I’ve talked to enough people who have been in the business long enough to to feel that same sort of thing. You know, I remember talking on the phone with Brian Bedford.
I was like, Brian, how are you doing? And he was like, oh, you know, I’m fine. I just feel like. You know, it never gets easier, just it just continues to get harder and harder, and that is true, it doesn’t.
And as you get older, too, you know, you find the limitations of what that means. And then for Brian, I think at that time he was playing Lear. And so he was talking, calling to talk to Michael as a stage manager, not to me as Oswald.
But, you know, he was very honest and open about the challenges and also the challenges of both directing the show and being Lear and being known for being a funny guy and how he didn’t want to be the Lear that was considered funny. Or so some of the he cut some of the comedy out of it. And I think that that was a real indication of of that thing of like not wanting to be caught out by an audience that knows him well, that knows Shakespeare well, and for it to be important.
Like you say, you know, and so but without that, without that comedy, as you say, it changes that story implicitly. And Pete Donaldson, bless his soul, was so funny about it that he said that he had so many cuts in his role that instead of playing the Earl of Kent, he was the ear of Ken. So, you know, there was a lot of joy in that room, for sure.
But there was also a lot of that challenge, that pain of of realizing I’m at a certain point in my career as a for Brian as a director and as a leading man playing Lear, that expectation here, are you going to be good enough? Are you good enough? And that never I don’t think that ever really goes away. Like even and maybe that’s what keeps us doing it is that pursuit. No, I think for me, it’s it’s a stubborn will of being told, no, this isn’t for you or no, you can’t do this.
Or like I can tell you at any given time, like you’re an actor. Oh, wow. Have I seen you in anything? You know, it’s all of that stuff.
Yeah, well, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me everything you’ve seen? I’ll tell you if I was in it. It’s like the worst question ever.
But it’s the most common question that people ask. It’s true. I don’t know.
Like what do you like when people say that? I always want to say, how much theatre do you see? Exactly. As you talk about that, I’m reminded of because those are questions that appear in a lot of the TV shows, Slings and Arrows as well, there’s a lot of questioning about people who are been doing it for a while and and how to, you know, what what does it mean to keep doing this and do this for the like my my entire life as as the people in it are in the company are aging and things like that, it’s fascinating questions that I don’t think get asked a whole lot. Yeah, I think I think that there’s a there’s a real misunderstanding about what it is that that it almost comes with a sense of of graduation to a status where you don’t have to worry about that anymore.
But I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re always concerned about how you are coming off. Well, I think there’s something about being in the room with people.
Right. Like when you’re performing, you know, if you’re in a film and it’s bad, you’re not necessarily in the room where people react to it. That’s true.
Yeah. You know, if a moment doesn’t work in a play, everybody on stage and everybody in the audience knows it. There’s no denying that that that’s happened.
And so it sort of keeps you chasing those moments. Right. And it gets harder, too, like as as you get older, even just remembering, like, are you going to remember your lines? Like everyone’s always like early on in your career.
They’re like, how do you how do you remember all those lines? You know, it’s a whole different explanation. But but as you get older, literally the idea of of freezing or, you know, just totally dropping or having to leave the stage and look at the script to see where the hell you are, those are real those are real fears. And those are real moments that that happen.
You never know. You never know when they’re going to happen. No.
And it’s it’s it’s funny because I know for myself, when I’ve been learning new solo plays that I’ve written, like I don’t retain it right as as quickly as I used to. The new stuff. Sure.
I could still remember stuff that I did like 20 years ago. Yeah. Like I know, like right there.
Oh, I like I sing songs from theatre school all the bloody time. And Robbie Clark is like, yeah, what are you singing? Like, you still know that song? Yeah. And then and then, you know, but there’s whole speeches, whole like like my solo play, The Commandment.
I could do that tomorrow. But anything new I can’t. Isn’t it wild? Yeah.
So much to like get to the point where I can remember it. It takes a lot more. And I thought during COVID, oh, my God, I’ll never be able to come back because I’m sort of practice.
Yeah. I don’t even know how to do it anymore. I don’t like all of that stuff.
So what a time we’ve had. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
I don’t are you are you working on anything right now? I mean, not necessarily theatre wise, but you mentioned like the film that you were trying to get funded, things like that. Yeah, I I’ve I’m I’m writing a screenplay as well about toxic masculinity and the the challenges of growing up and inheriting a sort of. I’m sort of a history of denial, denial and what that does to a person, and it’s a psychological thriller and I love it and I am not used to writing in that sort of genre, but it’s endlessly fascinating and it lets me get out my inner bro for a while and, you know, talk about things in ways that are pretty frickin dark and shitty and reflect the sort of awfulness of the way things are handed down from generation to generation, that kind of disrespect.
Yeah. And hate. I don’t understand hate.
And so I try to write about it so I can kind of come to an understanding of of where it belongs or where how it can be artistically challenged. So, yeah, that’s that’s where I am right now. I really want to film it.
It’s like a really small cast and it would be really great to do. But yeah, so I’m always working and I just thought of another play idea the other day. So it’s not like it’s impossible that another one could come out.
But we’ll see. We’ll see how much time I have. Yeah.
Well, I mean, we it’s it’s fascinating because I always find that the best way for me not to be writing is to stop writing. Yeah, that’s true. You know, if I but if I start writing, it’s like all of these new ideas come.
I have like pages and pages. I have to write this one down just to get that out so they don’t like try to write that now because I have to finish this one. It’s creativity is is a wild thing.
When you’re writing in a genre that you haven’t worked in before is a thriller. How do you prepare for that? Do you watch a lot of thrillers? Do you like how do you put your head in that space? Yeah, because I do love thrillers like I I love watching thrillers. I think psychological thrillers kind of like right up my alley, you know, in a way, because I don’t I’m not huge on like horror or gore or anything, but anything sort of psychological that you can think.
And I some of my favourite things I’ve seen are by Lars von Trier films and talk about darkness. I mean, he really does delve deep into the psyche. And even David Lynch has been a huge inspiration.
You know, what a what a genius. So I think those are things that I have, even though it’s not a genre that I’ve worked in as far as writing it, I think I get it and I understand what it is. And I think of my own, even my own way of thinking about things.
And it lends itself really well to to sort of schooling yourself about those bro things that I was talking about, like that. If you if you delve too deeply into the bro culture and you know, all of this looks maxing and all of these sort of new cultural sort of iconography and ways of of of being like that whole tape thing, that whole like all of it is just so gross. And so if you think psychologically, how can I enter the world and what is on the flip side of it? How does it how does it inform what is on the the healing part of those dark sores that have been left to fester for so long? You know, so, yeah, I find that really invigorating and a real source of like a wellspring of of being able to find both of those, the seesaw of it all.
So, yeah. Well, we’re basically at the end of our time. I really want to thank you for joining me.
This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. Wow.
My God. My pleasure. Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy.
In a second, I’m going to tell you about my guest next week. But let’s do a little housekeeping. If you’re watching on YouTube like this episode, leave a comment so that I know that you were here.
And if you like Stageworthy, hit that subscribe button, that bell icon, so that whenever I drop a new episode, you will get notified that a new episode is available. If you’re listening to the audio version, do make sure that you’re subscribed. Go to your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy and hit the follow button.
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And I would be grateful for that. All right. My guest next week is Steffi DiDomenicantonio.
Steffi is an actor, musical theatre artist and Canadian Idol alumni. This is a lively conversation you’re going to love to hear next week. We talk a lot about theatre, the theatre world.
There are a bunch of hot takes from both of us, which you will not want to miss. So tune in next week for that on Stageworthy.
