Erin Shields is Bringing Deaf and Hearing Worlds Together in To A Flame
About This Episode:
Playwright Erin Shields joins Phil for a wide-ranging conversation about To a Flame, her loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, a production fifteen years in the making that features both deaf and hearing performers and is performed in spoken English and American Sign Language. Erin also reflects on a remarkable year of productions, from Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary to Medusa to You Always, and how the pandemic, gave her the space to experiment with form in ways she hadn’t before, and much more!
Guest: ✍️ Erin Shields
Erin Shields is a Canadian playwright, actor and educator based in Toronto. Most of her work highlights the negation or misrepresentation of women in classical texts by adapting these stories through a feminist lens for a contemporary audience. She likes making large plays for large stages. Her work has played across Canada and beyond.
Connect with Erin
🌐 Website: http://www.erinshields.ca
📸 Instagram: @shieldserin1
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast, and on Stageworthy, I talk to theatre makers of all kinds, from actors to directors to playwrights and more.
If they make theatre in Canada, I talk to them. Some of the people I talk to are household names, and the rest are people that I really think you should get to know. I don’t publicize the episode numbers anymore.
I used to do that quite a bit. But I decided that that’s something that you need to know. As a listener, you don’t need to know what the number of the episode is.
That’s something for me, and it’s sort of like a milestone. Each one is a milestone. But I want to point out that it’s kind of my attention.
I realized as I was looking that today’s episode is episode 484. Now, I had my little hiatus over a year, maybe two years ago now. I mean, I could talk about the reasons why I paused on Stageworthy and said that I’d left it.
We could do that another time. That’s not for today. But with the realization that this is episode 484, that means that episode 500 is coming up.
And that’s going to be coming in January next year. So January 2027, which will be both marking the 11th year of Stageworthy, and then a few weeks later, the 500th episode. And that’s a huge milestone.
Also, both from the perspective of having returned to Stageworthy after leaving for a while, and also just as far as like podcasts go 500 is quite a huge mark. To me, this podcast is about being in service to the industry, in service to theater. And I missed that when I was not doing this show for a year.
And so that’s one of the things that brought me back. I felt so disconnected from the industry after feeling so connected to it for so long. But also, it just something was missing because I was not working in service to the theater.
And so to me, this milestone, it’s a massive achievement. And it’s a massive thing to think about how many people I’ve interviewed over the years. It’s pretty amazing.
And I want to keep obviously, I’m going to keep going. I don’t know. I don’t know how many episodes this this podcast will be when I finally do lay it to rest.
Finally, at the end, whatever that might be, but I hope it’s at least 500 more. And to make that happen. I would love your help because making a podcast does cost money.
And I don’t want to belabor the fact of talking about this since I launched the Patreon, but there’s a lot of costs that go into creating a podcast, none of which reflect on you because you get the podcast for free. And I am happy to do that. But if you would like to help me make the podcast, you could join the Patreon patreon.com slash stageworthy and go there and become a patron. Patrons get early access to episodes and also have conversations about things happening in the theater world. And the more people who join the more I’ll be able to offer to the people who choose to be patrons. And if you can’t commit to a monthly donation, if you would like to do something a one time, there is a link at Ko-fi.com slash stageworthy ko dash fi slash stageworthy. That would be appreciated too as a one time help to keep this show happening. I would be so grateful if you could do that. And that’s all of the housekeeping we’re going to do this week because I want to get right into the episode.
My guest this week is Erin Shields. Erin is a playwright and actor and having a huge year so many shows. We’ll talk about those in this episode, but so many shows, both that have happened this year Medusa, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, others is even including this one, there’s three shows that are coming up.
But we are talking today about to a flame, which is an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, which also features both hearing and deaf actors and is performed in both spoken and spoken English and ASL. Fascinating show, and I can’t wait for you to hear about it. So here is my conversation with Erin Shields.
Erin Shields, thank you so much for joining me. You have a show that’s opening very shortly now. It’s called To a Flame.
Could you tell me about To a Flame?
[Erin Shields]
Yes, To a Flame is a very loose adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher. In fact, that’s just sort of the inspiration. But what’s very unique about To a Flame is that it is a multidisciplinary play that is in both English and American Sign Language.
So there’s one deaf performer, two hearing performers, all the performers sign. So if you’re deaf, or if you’re hearing, you’ll be able to understand the play throughout.
[Phil Rickaby]
The mix of of deaf and and hearing artists is not something we often get to see. At what point in the writing of this play, did you decide or figure that you wanted to mix hearing and deaf performers?
[Erin Shields]
Actually, the whole process happened the other way around. So I was brought in this deaf actor, Dawn Jani Birley, and another actor, Lisa Karen Cox and Anna Harwick, got together with our director, Josette Bushell-Mingo, and the four of them wanted to work together. And they started to try to make a piece based on this, this source material, and using movement and ASL in English.
And I was brought into a second workshop, and they were like, Okay, what could this piece be as a writer? How do you think you could shape this? So it was it was interesting to come to, to come to the table with these ingredients already in place.
And then the task was to really figure out how to how to go about doing this.
[Phil Rickaby]
There is an inherent challenge. And one of the reasons why we’re we often don’t see hearing and deaf actors working together is because ASL is a completely different language. It is it is, you know, a blind person still speaks the language of the of sighted people, whereas a deaf performer speaks a visual language, which often the hearing performers don’t, don’t get to don’t also speak.
This affords us a very interesting opportunity for a deaf audience and a hearing audience to sit in the same room and experience a show. Like you said, have you worked with in the realm of ASL in the past?
[Erin Shields]
I have what we started working on this play about 15 years ago. So um, and what’s actually fascinating is my friend Dawn, who’s in the show and is one of the the not only one of the core performers, she’s also a producer, her company 1S1 is also a co producer, and it’s a deaf led company. What has been fascinating for me as a hearing person from the beginning is learning about deaf culture.
So it’s not it’s also not simply a language, it’s a it’s a whole culture, a culture that deaf community is very proud of. So reframing being deaf as as an equal strength to being hearing rather than as simply a disability, for example. So so learning about deaf culture, and, and really trying to understand, as you say, how the language works, you know, you can’t simply speak English and sign with your hands at the same time, because the language doesn’t work the same way.
So it’s been a really wonderful journey for me, both as a creator, also as a human being, to to learn ASL, you know, part of our rehearsal process is that we’ve had ASL classes, not just for the performers, but for everyone involved in the production. So you know, and gradually, as we’ve been working, we’ve had more and more time in the rehearsal process, which is no speaking time. So everyone is invited to be, you know, communicating with ASL, no matter how remedial it is, as a way to challenge hearing people to to really reach out.
[Phil Rickaby]
That is so important, because everybody in the production does need to be able to do to sign. Otherwise, you have to have the otherwise it puts the deaf performer or performers into the realm of being on the outside of the production.
[Erin Shields]
Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. And another thing, you know, I would say there is still a lot more weight on Dawn in the room, as you know, often one of often the only deaf person in the room.
She not only is performing, but she is also translating the words that I have written into American Sign Language, and then teaching it to the other actors. So yeah, so there it’s, it’s, it’s quite a task. And I have to say, you know, those are not the only two languages in the play as well.
There is a lot of movement, which is a language we can all understand. There is cello, Deanna Choi, our composer, has created this incredible soundscape that is sort of blasted through the theater in a way that you can feel the vibrations, you can feel it in your bones, so that deaf audience members and Dawn who’s performing can actually feel the music as well. And then there’s also incredible projections, which also help the performance.
So in many ways, I’d say there’s actually five or six languages sort of happening at the same time. And what’s enjoyable as an audience member, whether you’re deaf or hearing, is you are having moments of completely understanding at the same time, then moments where the deaf audience understands a bit earlier than the hearing audience. Yeah, so yeah, so it’s quite it is quite it’s a feast, I would say.
[Phil Rickaby]
It sounds like it’s really interesting, because I think not a lot of people realize that ASL, in not just being its own language, and an integral part of deaf culture, it has its own syntax. So it’s not a direct, it’s not a direct English to ASL translation. The the sentences are constructed in different ways as well.
I grew up when I grew up in Belleville, which when I was a child, Belleville housed one of two Ontario residential schools for the deaf. Belleville, the Surgeon’s Witness School, and there was another school in Whitby. My father was a teacher at that school.
And I know that when those schools when the residential schools were shut down, a lot of the a lot of deaf people were very upset about being forced into regular public schools. Because deaf culture was born at those schools, and, and perpetuated and and thrived in those schools. And then to put the put kids into regular schools where they were almost always segregated from the rest of the school anyway.
And it it kind of diluted, I think some of the the birthplaces and the the ways the deaf culture really thrived.
[Erin Shields]
And and yet it’s very strong still, I would say. It has to be. Also the rise of cochlear implants as a as a tool.
[Phil Rickaby]
Also very controversial in the deaf community.
[Erin Shields]
Very controversial. Yeah, yeah. I, I won’t, I won’t, I feel like it, it would be much better to talk to a deaf person about about all of these politics.
But, but as someone who’s been learning, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s very interesting to hear or see people talk about, talk about, talk about this in in great depth. And to, you know, see Dawn thrive in her, she, she’s actually an actor. She speaks, I want to say seven or eight languages.
She lives in Finland half the time, speaks Finnish sign, because the rights for the deaf are so much better in Finland. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.
She’s very frustrated with with the rights for the deaf in Canada. She grew up in the prairie. She’s a third generation deaf person.
So she grew up on a farm with her grandparents and her parents and her sister, all of whom were deaf, and went to school, as you say, an integrated school. And she was like, what the heck is going on? Yeah, of course.
Yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, you’re right. It’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s fascinating thing to go into.
And, you know, our, our piece, To a Flame, is about audism, about sort of prejudice against, against deaf people. And, and it’s also about, there’s an intersectionality in, in it as well. One of the actors is black, the director’s black, the other, the other actor is white and hearing, and that the play itself is about sort of the, these intersectional, marginalised identities, and what they have in common, what they don’t have in common, how they operate under a system that doesn’t sort of acknowledge their unique strengths.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It is funny because there is, there is, I mean, just thinking about some of things you were saying there about, you know, the, being a deaf in the hearing, in the hearing world, the hearing world is often very unforgiving of the deaf person in it. I mean, if we figure out that somebody’s deaf, what do we start doing?
People often just start shouting louder, as though that’s the thing that’s going to help. They don’t, you know, oh, I have to write down, like, people get really frustrated. And instead of, of realising that it’s a different way of communication, and, and, and, and this is a person, right?
It’s, it’s kind of like a microcosm of, of, of some of the many other micro aggressions that happen in, in, when dealing with people of colour, and Indigenous people, but also, it’s almost macro aggressions.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, absolutely. There’s macro, there’s micro, there’s all, all the aggressions and, and sort of barriers that, that, that people face, when even trying to, you know, get an apartment or go shopping. I talked about Finland, you know, Finnish sign is another national language.
So it’s, it’s recognised as a national language. And if you are deaf in Finland, you have the right to have an interpreter. So an interpreter is paid for by the state.
Even Dawn sometimes has come over here, and the Finnish government has flown over interpreters to work with us over here, because as a citizen, she has the right to, to have interpreters, which to me is just absolutely right. And, and incredibly frustrating that we don’t have as much access to that type of thing here.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. You mentioned about how you have a speechless time, so that people are using sign language in, in rehearsal. But what are some of the other ways that the rehearsal process and the creation process has integrated deafness and ASL into just the everyday of the process?
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, from beginning to end, it is a, is a, an integrated process, and in many ways, a deaf-led process. Our, our director speaks Swedish Sign, which is interesting. We often have many languages happening at the same time.
For many years, she was the Artistic Director of the Swedish Deaf Theatre. So often, she’ll start signing to Dawn in Swedish Sign. And then Dawn will be signing with an interpreter in ASL.
Our stage manager speaks ASL. Our assistant stage manager is very good at ASL. So, you know, there’s lots of different levels of language, which, which is helpful.
You also start to realize and understand etiquette when speaking and being in a space with deaf people. So how to get people’s attention, for example, you know, you can tap someone on the shoulder, you can wave your hand in front of someone’s eyes, you can stamp on the floor, there’s a pace to things that needs to happen. As hearing people, we often overlap when we’re talking.
So there’ll be more than one person talking at once, someone will jump in on somebody else’s statement and make another statement. So as a hearing person, one has to really bring an awareness to, to the way the whole room is working, not just what you want to say in the moment. You have to take your turn.
Often, it’s good to sort of say, Oh, I’m going to talk now. We always have two interpreters, because it’s very, you know, rigorous interpreting. So they’ll tag each other out.
So yeah, I would say the whole thing is, is really, is, is really integrated. And for me, this has been, you know, we’ve done a number of workshops. And, you know, those of us who have been with the project from the beginning, you sort of are, you’re, you’re continuing to learn throughout the whole process.
And then there’s new people that come in, and they’re brought into the culture of the space.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, if you don’t think about it, the way that a rehearsal room will often work is somebody will be on that side of the room, and start talking to somebody on that side of the room, which you can’t necessarily do, to include all of the, when people have to be able to see what’s being said. So the rehearsal space has to change from what it normally, what it would be with an entirely hearing group.
Yeah.
[Erin Shields]
Exactly. And conversely, what’s kind of fun is once you start doing that, like once you break away, and you’re having your own conversations, you can look across the room, and eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation, which is pretty, which is pretty interesting, too. And if it were, if it’s just hearing people in the space, you know, people can whisper in a corner, you’re signing, you know, you can, you can hide yourself.
But, but there’s, in some ways, there’s more openness to being able to just sort of see where, where everybody’s, everybody’s at, at a given moment.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Private conversations don’t necessarily stay private, because it can be seen. And I think that’s one thing that happens in, in Deaf spaces is, I’ve seen people have arguments, and everybody could be eavesdropping, but most people are very polite, not watching the conversation.
But anyway, I’m curious about the setting of To a Flame. You mentioned that it is based on The Fall of the House of Usher. How much are you leaning into the Victorian Gothic horror of that story?
[Erin Shields]
Very much. Very much.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah?
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s very theatrical. But yes, we’re, you know, I love the Victorian Gothic, particularly the literature, everything from sort of the Brontes, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, but also Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, like this, this kind of, you know, mid 19th century time, where there’s this sort of contrast between what people are meant to be doing, and sort of the propriety of the way people have to behave. And then all of these dark secrets underneath, all of these shadows, the silhouette of the women in these corsets, this sort of this, this tension between the restraint, and the just, you know, letting it out.
So secrets, also, we’ve thought a lot about, there was a, you know, in that period, there’s, it’s a real time of scientific innovation, and curiosity, not only around, like, both around, you know, different technologies, but also around the body itself, which is where you get something like, like Frankenstein, you know, could I, can I put a person together? And what happens if I do that? But also the psychology, you know, what, what is going on inside of us?
And what, what happens if we, you know, hide parts of ourselves or have to hide parts of ourselves? Is there a monster underneath? Is there a mad woman in the attic?
You know, like this, this kind of thing. So, so yeah, and, and, and, and to bring that into theatre is, is a lot of fun, and something we don’t, we don’t tend to do very much, because horror, I think, is very difficult in theatre. I think literature and film do it very well.
So, so trying to find that, that, yeah, the horror, the fear. It’s been very, very juicy and fun.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I mean, it is always interesting, because before there were, before there were movies, we used to put horror on stage all the time. And so it, there is something more visceral about it, because if you can, if you can work the problem, the fact that everybody’s in the room together does sort of heighten everything and make it a little bit more exciting.
[Erin Shields]
Yes, yes, exactly. And, and in this play, the audience is very much part of it. There’s a lot of direct address.
So the audience is very much invited into the, into the story. And it’s an intimate space, too. It’s at Nightwood’s new space, which is, which is fantastic.
And we’ve had the pleasure of, of, of working in there in the space we’re going to perform in throughout rehearsals.
[Phil Rickaby]
Nice. Now, this show is a four company collaboration. 1S1, Nightwood Theatre, Modern Times, and Why Not Theatre.
How did this project come together across all of these moving parts?
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, it’s been, I mean, this is, this is sort of, in some ways, this is where we’re at with theatre right now, because a project like this is expensive, because there’s all of these different aspects we’re trying to address. So I, you know, this began at Nightwood Theatre, 15 years ago, as I say, and then, you know, for a time, my theatre company got involved for a bit, and then it sort of laid dormant for 10 years. And then, yeah, Dawn’s company, 1S1, sort of picked up the flame.
And Dawn’s worked with Why Not Theatre quite a bunch. And so, you know, got the other companies involved. And I know Why Not supported a big workshop they did last year.
So, so, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty amazing to have four companies working together on something like this. And, and, and also hopefully bringing, bringing their audiences together to enjoy the show.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. Mm hmm. The Fall of the House of Usher is a lot about housing, houses, inheritances.
Is that a theme that you’ve worked with in the past? Is that something that sort of speaks to you?
[Erin Shields]
I don’t know if I’ve worked with houses before, specifically. But yeah, this idea of an inheritance, I find very interesting in this. And, and, and what’s, what’s particularly interesting in Fall of the House of Usher is that, that they are at, Madeleine and Roderick Usher are at the end of this lineage.
So the house is sort of a manifestation of their sort of ancient lineage, which will now come to an end because neither of them have had children. And they are wasting away in this house, and the house itself is crumbling. So something that’s been really interesting to, to work with is to think of the house itself as a character, the way it is in the short story, how it is acting on, on the women in this house, and how it’s keeping secrets and how it’s shedding secrets, you know, and, and, and, you know, it’s very, very much the same as something like Jane Eyre.
Which I did an adaptation of Jane Eyre. And, and once she gets to Rochester’s house, it really is this massive ancestral house that is really quite empty and full of secrets. So, so yeah, that was, that was a point of inspiration.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. Um, you, you, a lot of your work is looking at the writing that you’ve done in the past, a lot of it is reimaginings and adaptations. Is that something that speaks to you?
Is that something that like, like, how did you come to, to that as a central point in your work?
[Erin Shields]
Yes, I am very much into that. I think part of it is I am, I am really drawn to classics. I am so inspired by ancient works, works that have endured, because of, you know, the strength of character story, but also of the mastery of poetry, for example, someone like Shakespeare or Milton, even Charlotte Bronte, you know, the way she crafted this novel.
And so when I read these, these sort of ancient, older, older texts, not all of them are ancient, I sort of really get into them. And often, and the ones I’ve mostly interacted with are written by men four or 500 years ago. And, you know, I worked with the Bible last year, it was even longer ago, a whole bunch of men.
And so I find those, those things that I just mentioned to be really, really inspiring. But I do find, you know, myself as I’m missing a little bit from them, both, both, both as a woman, as a contemporary human. And also, I’m thinking about my place in the world as a Canadian as well.
So bringing those contemporary perspectives to these older texts, and looking around and seeing, you know, maybe it’s finding a character who has a very small role. And I would really love to hear more from them. So it can become a sort of fan fiction thing in a way.
Or sometimes it’s about really wanting to draw on a theme that feels particularly relevant to our times now. And then just the pleasure of interacting with this, with this writer, you know, when you come to see To a Flame, audiences will notice the tenor of the text that is heightened, and it is in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe. It isn’t his text, but it is, it is, I’m sort of working with the muscularity of his long descriptive sentences, and his, he’s really got an incredible ability to, to, you know, precisely describe things.
I find a real pleasure in stretching myself as an artist that way, and sort of channeling that kind of writing through my own instrument as an artist.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You mentioned working with the Bible. Was that Mary, Mary, Mary?
[Erin Shields]
Yeah. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary.
[Phil Rickaby]
Four Marys. Four Marys. Four Marys.
Yes. No. Yes.
I read that, I mean, last, I mean, you have a, I’ve had a big year, so I want to talk about some of those shows. In the last 12 months, you’ve had a bunch of shows premiere. But I read that both Medusa and Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary were being written during COVID.
Yes. What was, was that period of time something where you were able to, to write prolifically? Like how, what was the process of, and how did COVID inform the plays that you were, that you were working on?
[Erin Shields]
Yeah. So in, in the beginning of 2020, I was set up to have the most incredible year of my professional life. I had four large productions of Paradise Lost slated to run across the country.
And one of them, we got one of them in, in February of 2020 in Montreal, but then the others just collapsed. And that was devastating. You know, I’m, I’m sure every single human has, has story, a story about this.
So yeah, I found that incredibly depressing. And, and really, it sort of untethered me in many ways, both in a, in a frustrating way, but also in a good way. Because I, I couldn’t quite see what the future was.
So I couldn’t, I couldn’t pitch any, any theater a play because the theaters were just scrambling to survive. So there was not a lot of interaction going on between artists and theaters. So I thought, you know what, this is a great time, actually, for me to, to really think about my practice, think about form, form in particular, like what type of theater do I want to make?
How can I stretch myself? You know, I was living in Montreal at the time, and I was really, really influenced by the artists, the playwrights there, particularly the Francophone playwrights, who, who take huge risks with, they just, it’s just a whole other type of dramaturgy, which is a lot more poetic, a lot more symbol driven, less tied to a narrative than I would say Anglophone work tends to be, whether it’s here in the States or in England. They, they, they are really searching for deeper meaning.
So I was like, I want to write like that. Let’s see if I can write like that.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Erin Shields]
So, so those two, both of those projects, which were both, you know, very different in the end, but they did come out of a sense of like, what if I didn’t have to even think about who this would be for? What if I, what if I just experimented?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I, I find that, I think sometimes in English Canada, we forget or don’t know about how unique the Francophone and the Quebecois theatre scene is, because we don’t get to see it. When I was in, years ago, I did the, the, the Montreal Fringe, and one of the things I was taken by was the number of literal neighbourhood theatres. Oh yeah, absolutely.
Like, a theatre in the neighbourhood that people went to.
[Erin Shields]
People go to the theatre. Yes. Everybody goes to the theatre.
My neighbours had subscriptions to different theatres, but, and they didn’t work in theatre. I was like, wait a second, you don’t work in theatre and you regularly go to the theatre?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Erin Shields]
This is crazy. And it’s because it’s tied into identity. It’s tied into.
[Phil Rickaby]
100%.
[Erin Shields]
And because of that, they, the artists, you know, they can take, they’ve historically taken more risks and continue to take more risks because they brought this whole audience along with them. They’re also in conversation with the continent. Yeah.
There’s a lot of shows that are coming through, going to FTA, the Festival Transamerique. So, so people are really seeing a lot of work that, that challenges them in different ways. There’s a lot of dance too, which is very, very.
[Phil Rickaby]
Physical theatre they love, like physical theatre. There’s, it’s like a, there’s a, there’s a clown, there’s clowning. There’s like so much work there.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I miss that landscape. Yeah, for sure.
We’ve got some interesting things here in Toronto, for sure.
[Phil Rickaby]
We do, but we don’t have that neighbourhood theatre that people are devoted to and that they, they go to just as a matter of course. But you mentioned like the way that people experiment. And it’s one of the things that I did notice that’s unique about the Montreal fringe, where audiences, you know, in other parts of Canada, we want it at least a little bit punished, polished.
In Toronto, we really like a polished show. In, in, in Montreal, bring your mess.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, bring your mess.
[Phil Rickaby]
They’re like, just do it. Like, whatever it is, do it. We will, we’ll come and see it.
You will react to it. We like it a little messy, which is like a really freeing thing to have.
[Erin Shields]
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I agree.
Absolutely. You need, you need, you need mess. You need risk.
And you need, you need to do it. And you just get up there and do it and feel like you can, you can fail or succeed or find something you didn’t think you were going to find. Yeah.
I mean, that, that’s why it’s been actually with To A Flame, just getting back to that, it’s been such a pleasure for it to, you know, cook for so long.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Erin Shields]
And to, because there’s all these different ways of telling the story. And so, and some of them, again, aren’t even about telling the story. It’s about giving sensation.
It’s about, you know, cracking open this, this armor we carry around with us every day. So we get this little, ooh, what was that? I just felt something.
And I, I don’t even, I don’t even know what it was or how it sort of punctured me. So I really feel like this play has so many little moments of that, that, that, that audiences can just go and sort of be open to, to the experience and going on the ride of, of sensation that the show is.
[Phil Rickaby]
There’s definitely something about, I mean, you, you’ve mentioned that, that, you know, the show you’ve been working on it for 15 years. There’s a luxury in having time and not rushing towards performance, which I think sometimes we do in Canada, we kind of have a tendency to like get to the performance as soon as we can. When sometimes things take a little longer and there’s a luxury to be able to like really, you know, let it be messy for a while, not have to rush to clean it up and like allow it to take its form over time.
Is that, has that been a unique part of this experience for you?
[Erin Shields]
Absolutely. And it’s, it’s been, you know, also it, we didn’t work on it for 10 years in the midst of that. So, so, you know, it’s not like we’ve been working on it constantly, but what’s fun is sort of coming back to it.
You know, it’s, it’s very rare that I will even ever read a thing I wrote 15 years ago. Oh my God, no. So, so the fear I had to actually like look at the thing again and be like, Oh, do I still stand behind this?
Is this still, you know, a representation of myself as an artist now? And also to just have the, to let go of the ego around it in a way too, and, and feel, feel reassured that there are so many other artists who are responsible for, for collaborating and interacting with it. That it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s been quite, it’s been quite interesting to sort of, yeah, come, come back to it in that way.
You know, I remember it was 15 years ago because my daughter was six months old when we started working on it and she is 16 now.
[Phil Rickaby]
So there you go. That’s a great, that’s a good barometer.
[Erin Shields]
That’s a good, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was such a different person as a new mom back then, you know, that was such a different place than where I am now. So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the interesting thing about theatre too is, is it, you interact with it at the place in which you are.
Yeah. Whether you’re creating it or come to see it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. Anytime that I’ve, I’ve like come to a show again, like for a remount or something, we’re entirely investigating the whole thing again because we are all different people from when we first did it or, or, or worked on it. You mentioned that the show wasn’t worked on for 10 years and that trepidation of like looking at the work after 10 years.
How did that feel going back to it? Like when you, when you picked it up, how, how, how was the work? Did you stand behind it or did you have to overhaul it a lot?
[Erin Shields]
I, you know, I, I read it when Dawn was like, oh, we want to, we want to do this again. I’ve got some money, which is always the thing that’s asked is like, what do you think? I was like, oh boy, I don’t know.
I don’t know my friend. And then I read it. I was like, oh, okay.
Yeah, actually. No, this is actually quite good. You’re reading it, Dawn.
I was, I was good. And then also just trusting my friend and collaborator and her, her, her drive behind it. I think she’s the one who actually, you know, brought everybody back, brought the director back and said, we got to do it.
Yeah, actually two new actors now too. So there was a workshop last year with two other actors and then this time there’s two new actors. So what’s fun about that is you have some people like myself and, and Dawn and Josette and Birgit, who’s our, our dramaturge and assistant director.
We’ve been with it from the beginning, but then there’s these two new creative forces and they are forces, both of them, who are meeting the work for the first time. So, so that’s really interesting too.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. There is definitely something about the distance that, that time gives you when you’re like looking at something that you wrote again, because you are a different person than you were when you wrote it. You get to look at it in a little bit more an objective way and, and like be a little outside of it.
So you can maybe, you know, you could honestly say to yourself, this is still good. Or maybe it still needs a lot of work when you come back to it.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. As I say, I don’t think there’d be many texts that I’d go back to and be like, I want to do this basically exactly the way it is.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. One of the shows that you wrote during COVID was Medusa, which was staged last year in an immersive fashion. If I have this right, with Outside the March and, and Soul Pepper.
Is that right? Yeah, that’s correct. At what point in the creation of that show did the immersive aspect of it take shape?
[Erin Shields]
Well, I always knew, I mean, as I, as I mentioned, I wrote this during the pandemic and I, I, I, one of the things that I think is integral to a strong theater performance is that the form and the content speak to one another. So it’s not like, not all content will sit in the same form. So I knew I wanted to explore this, this Medusa character and this archetype.
And I, there was something about the serpent, something about her story pre serpent head that really struck me as, as being like the voices in our heads. As we walk around the world, we have these little nagging voices that, that tell us, oh, you’re stupid. You’re an idiot.
Why did you do that? Or, oh man, you’re killing it. You go like, you know, whatever they are, you’ve got these different, different sort of voices in your head.
And I was like, what if those are the serpents before, before they explode? And, and then I was like, well, what if it happens at the same time? So that was really sort of an impulse from the beginning.
I sort of wrote, you know, if you were to look at the script, you’d see along one side of the page is all of the texts that the audience is watching the scenes that the actors are acting out. And then the other side, you have the serpent sort of commenting. So I explored, I played with that right from the beginning.
I didn’t know exactly how it would happen. I sort of suspected there that it would be cool to have headphones, but I was like, I don’t know. So, so that’s why, you know, finding Mitchell Cushman and thinking Mitchell Cushman and Outside the March as the perfect match for that proposal made so much sense.
Because, you know, Mitchell and his company, of course, have done so many different, like, immersive experiences. So, so it really was sort of the perfect match. And we were able to do some workshops and really, really, really try to figure out how to do it.
And then the second act, which is entirely different than that first act proposal, which is also has an immersive element. I actually wrote that like a couple years later. So the second act had been more of the same.
And I was like, no, I think it’s completely different. So it ended up in some ways like writing three plays because I had this two streams of text. And then the second act was entirely different.
Right. Completely different form. So, again, just added to the fun and the challenge and, and, and the pleasure of, I’d not worked with Mitchell before.
So finding just sort of intuiting that he would be the right person and then, and then discovering, oh, yeah, you are the right person. And it’s wonderful to work with you and, and the way he leads a room is really, really fantastic. So, so yeah, the joy of theatre is collaboration.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. What did you learn from that experience?
[Erin Shields]
Oh, what did I learn? I learned so much as I went. I mean, I, I learned, well, I learned a lot about the piece.
I learned a lot about sound technology and how complicated it is. We literally had three sound designers with us the entire time, basically. Heidi Chan and two apprentices.
And so I learned a lot about that. And I learned a lot about sort of how, how essential ensemble is. Which I, you know, kind of already knew in some sense.
Every, it seems like every play proves that in some ways. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary was a lot like that too. You know, five incredible people who were just like so connected.
But I think Medusa really reinforced it for me. And, and also I think I learned, you know, if, if you, if you can, if you can dream it and start working towards it, you can make it happen. And, and also the audience will come along for the ride.
You know, it doesn’t mean everybody loved it. Doesn’t mean everybody went out singing like being like, that was the best thing I’ve ever seen. But it means, but I just mean that in terms of what we’re talking about before, in terms of, you know, you know, the Quebecois scene being quite risky and experimental.
I think as creators in Toronto, we have to, we have to really be as risky as that and dream up big impossible things and try to make them happen. And people do. I mean, Summer Works is full of that.
But encouraging our larger theaters to get on board with, with those larger proposals as well. And those more innovative proposals, you can really bring the audience along for the ride.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I think audiences appreciate a big swing.
[Erin Shields]
Oh yeah. For sure. Who doesn’t?
I mean. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, you could say, you know, okay, maybe it didn’t work, but man, that was a risk. And, you know, you got to appreciate that, you know, so many opportunities to like, I think sometimes, you know, when you’re dealing with big budgets, sometimes you’ll, you’ll play. It’s safe.
And I think sometimes audiences can sense that.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Erin, I would love to talk to you about your theater origin story, because we all have that thing. The thing that first got us interested in theater and the thing that made us make it our careers. So for you, what was, what is your theater origin story?
What first got you interested in theater?
[Erin Shields]
Yeah. I mean, I think like most people started off in school and summer camp for me, you know, I had a great drama teacher at middle school who would do these big musicals, you know, with The Little Shop of Horrors and The War of the Grease Paint the Smell of the Crowd, which was like kind of obscure now that I think about it. But no, he was, he was fantastic.
And his partner would come in and do the choreography. Willard Boudreau and Gary Smith, who, you know, Gary Smith was a reviewer for the Hamilton Spectator, only just retired. And the two of them, like are Hamilton theater.
So I grew up in Hamilton. So starting with them and then into high school with David Daylor at Westdale Secondary School. I did a lot of, a lot of theater there.
And then, yeah, summer camp, you know, we would do these, these musicals in three weeks and I just loved it. There was nothing, nothing I loved more than like being in my bunk at night with my flashlight trying to learn my lines. And then when I got to be, you know, older, I became the head of theater and I would direct like five different plays in a summer.
I was adapting them, you know, because you had to, you know, make it for the girls camp. So I’d have to, you know, get these things and adapt them. So that’s, that’s really where I started writing and adapting.
Even this, this work was doing, you know, five plays in a summer. And by the end of doing this job, maybe four years, you know, I was 20, 21. I was like, well, why don’t I write my own?
Why don’t I, you know, just sort of really stretching myself. And, and I went to theater school in London, UK, drama. I started as an actor.
And so I was bringing that into this stuff I was doing in the summer. And, and yeah, and then I, then I came to, to Toronto, didn’t know anyone. And the two thousands was a great time in Toronto for indie theater.
You know, there’s so many, you know, so many of my collaborators I had then, I still have now, you know, Donaldson, Maev Beatty. And a lot of, you know, those folks I came up with are now running theatres or a lot of us are still in the game, you know? So it was a really great time.
And I, I, I, it was such a, such a joy and a challenge to be part of, of that scene and be making, you know, you’d make stuff at a little cabaret and then you’d do the fringe and do summer works and trying to get somebody, the bigger theaters to see. And so, so yeah, that’s, that’s sort of my origin story.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
A lot of people will do plays in middle school and high school and will, might go to theater summer camp, but for them that doesn’t translate into like a theater career. They might say, well, maybe I’ll do security theater and I’ll, you know, I won’t, I won’t, it’s not the thing for me. But at what point did you decide that this was it for you?
This was the thing you were going to do?
[Erin Shields]
Oh, I, I, I knew it’s all I wanted to do. Yeah. In high school.
And I was like, I have to go to acting school. I have to. And oh, wouldn’t it be amazing to go to England?
Like that’s the place where it all, it all starts. I mean, their guy is a playwright. Like their best writer is a playwright.
How great is that? So yeah, I, I think I always knew. I think that I think the surprise for me maybe was that I would transition out of acting into playwriting, which is not that I wouldn’t act again.
Directors take notes. But, but yeah, no, I, I’d say when I started, like I, I started writing because there weren’t enough good parts for young women and I wasn’t getting the ones that there were. So I was like, I have to do this.
So I may as well write it. And started making work with friends and collaborators like Matt Beatty and Andrew Donaldson. And, and then I finally wrote one that seemed too big to be in because I needed to see it from the outside.
And that was if we were birds. And I was like, I kind of like this thing.
[Phil Rickaby]
Does your time as an actor and studying acting and, and doing the work, does that, what effect does that have on the way that you write?
[Erin Shields]
Oh, it has total impact on how I write. Yeah. I write from the inside.
So I’m really feeling the characters from the inside, all of them, which makes me a bit mad sometimes. But, but yeah, no, that’s the only way I, I think I can do it is I like, I hear them, but I am them. If that makes any sense.
[Phil Rickaby]
It makes complete sense to me. There have been so many times I remember one particular thing. I was writing something and something came out about the character.
And so, and I wrote this speech for them and then I had to take a break and I was weeping because of the, the thing that I like. Yeah. The characters live in you.
Right. And so you have to, they live in you and you put them on the page and it can be very difficult to, to separate yourself in the midst of writing sometimes.
[Erin Shields]
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
[Phil Rickaby]
You are, in addition to being a writer and a playwright and an actor, you are teaching and mentoring emerging playwrights at NTS and U of T. Is there a piece of advice that you are, you find yourself repeating to young playwrights?
[Erin Shields]
Absolutely. First of all, you just have to do it. So stop fussing around with, you know, finding the right, perfect time.
Find your collaborators, so find your people. It’s, as I was describing to you, you know, in the 2000s, like being, having directors who are my friends or other actors who are my friends and saying like, let’s put on a show, let’s do a fringe thing. That, that gets you to practice it.
Right. If you’re just on your own, sort of writing on your own, you weren’t actually getting to practice the thing. So, so just do it, find your collaborators.
And, and, and also I think like investigate for yourself what, if you want to be a writer, like what, what is the, like investigate your own practice and what you need around writing, which is, which is like, what time of day do you write best at? Me, morning, like I got to wake up and do it. I can’t write at night.
I know some people who are like, I have to, midnight, that’s my time. So investigating that. And then I would say the final thing, which I think is integral, especially for, for the youngins, but for all of us really, is, is you need open brain time.
You need time in your life when you aren’t listening to somebody else’s ideas or watching someone else’s ideas, because we have these stupid bone things. We, it’s so tempting that when you’re doing the dishes or walking the dog that you’re listening to podcasts or, I mean, it can be something virtuous too. I’m not talking about garbage, like listening to good podcasts.
But if you, if I find for myself, if I always have somebody else’s ideas and thoughts in my brain, my brain isn’t doing the thing which my brain is really good at, which is thinking about stories and just wandering around, sopping things up from the environment and, and also solving problems that I’m having. So if I’m having a problem with something that I’m writing, I’ll go for a run, I’ll walk my dog, I’ll do the dishes, I’ll, you know, do something and just let my brain kind of, kind of work on it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. One of the things we don’t have because of these devices is boredom. Yeah.
And boredom is so integral to the creative process that we need to get away from the constant scrolling and video watching and listening to podcasts and music and everything else that’s so easy. I have to remind myself at least once a day, that phone has to go away if you’re going to get any writing done, if you’re going to do anything creative, it’s got to be across the room from, from you at least. For sure.
Yeah. Absolutely. Your, your big year of, of productions is continuing.
You have the great Gatsby coming up. You have an adaptation of, of Allswell coming up as well as, as well as to a flame. You had so many plays that have been performed this year.
And I mean, we talked about how things like sort of like went away during COVID.
[Erin Shields]
They’re back.
[Phil Rickaby]
They’re back. Is this, is this one of your best years?
[Erin Shields]
Is this like, I keep pinching myself because it’s like this. I mean, this never happens. I mean, two shows in a year is extraordinary.
You know, one show every two or three years is sort of the norm. So, so yeah, this is, and, and it’s, it’s timing more than anything. Right.
It’s not like I wrote all of these last year and it’s relationships, it’s timing, it’s just kind of happened. So I’ve just been trying to, you know, go through each project and just really enjoy it. And what’s been such a set so joyful is that each one is so different, which has been really, really great to be able to be like, okay, this is, you know, the very first play I did this year is you always, which was a two-hander about sisters.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Erin Shields]
And it’s very personal. It’s very much about my relationship with my sisters or my kids. Or so going from that then to Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, which was super poetic and weird.
And then going to Medusa, which was also weird, but and huge and this technical stuff. And then, yeah, to a flame, great gas, bees, a big, huge adaptation on an, you know, in an a house, which is, is a whole other thing. And then, yeah, back to all as well at crows, which will be another, another great way to end the year.
So, so yeah, no, I’m just mostly feeling grateful and tired.
[Phil Rickaby]
For sure. Just to come back, just as we start to come to the end of our time together, to talk a little bit more about to a flame 15 years in the making. Along, you know, rehearsal process rediscovering and creating a way of working with hearing and deaf performers and, and, and, and, and, and crew.
When this show opens, is there something that you would most want an audience to take away from this show?
[Erin Shields]
I want, I want them to experience this, you know, interconnectivity of, of experiences and to, you know, I think for a hearing audience, there’s going to be a lot that is learned a lot that is fresh and new and surprising. I think for a deaf audience, there will be two, you know, I think for deaf audience members, there will be people who don’t go to the theater very much at all because there isn’t very much theater at all for deaf people. So, so I think, you know, those two, there will be two very different, but simultaneously side by side experiences in terms of deaf and hearing audiences.
But yeah, it’s, it’s the sort of the connection and, and, and, and effort that we’ve all made to, to move toward one another.
[Phil Rickaby]
Amazing. Well, Erin, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Looking forward to, to a flame and to the other plays you have happening this year.
[Erin Shields]
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you so much.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I hope that you enjoyed it.
My guest next week is Jay Northcott. Jay is the director of Bootycandy bodies in bad times. It’s a co-production between Buddies and Obsidian theatre.
So tune in next week for that conversation with Jay Northcott.
