Jack Burrill Makes Shakespeare Feel Dangerous Again
About This Episode:
In this episode of Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby speaks with Jack Burrill, actor, director, acting coach, and Artistic Director of Unchained Theatre. What begins as a shared nerd-out over Shakespeare quickly becomes a wide-ranging conversation about why these 400-year-old plays still matter – and how indie theatre is often where their most exciting reinventions happen.
This episode explores:
- Founding Unchained Theatre during the pandemic
- Modernizing classic texts without losing their soul
- Performing Shakespeare in small, intimate spaces
- Why indie theatre matters in Toronto’s ecosystem
- Theatre as an irreplaceable live experience
- And much more!
Guest: 🎭 Jack Burrill
Jack Burrill is an actor, a director, a writer, teacher and the proud Artistic Director and co-founder of Unchained Theatre. As Jack has taken part in productions that he has both acted in and directed (often at the same time.) Some of Jack’s credits include Denise Shepard (Laramie Project), Wargrave (And Then There Were None), Sir Toby Belch (Twelfth Night), Titania/Theseus (Midsummer Night’s Dream), Falstaff (Henry IV Part 1). And recently Jack will be Claudius in Hamlet. Jack was recently nominated by Broadway World for his performance as Titania/Thesus in Thaumatrope Theatres production of Midsummer Nights Dream. Jack was trained at Centennial CollegeTheatre Arts and Performance program. As well as being trained in both the Grotowski method by Ara Glenn-Johanson and the Michael Chekhov Technique by Rena Polley and Lionel Walsh, with an aspiration to be trained in more of the legendary practitioner’s methods. He hopes to continue his work and research by producing Shakespeare and learning the different approaches to the craft of acting to pass it on to future generations of actors and artists.
Connect with Jack Burrill & Unchained Theatre:
📸 Instagram: @jackieb123_______
📸 Instagram: @unchained_theatre_company___
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast and on Stageworthy I talk to theatre makers of all kinds, from actors to directors to playwrights, producers, stage managers.
If they make theatre in Canada, I talk to them. There are so many amazing people who make theatre in Canada. Some of the people I talk to will be household names and the rest I really think you should get to know.
I love introducing you to new artists and I love meeting those new artists. Before we get into today’s episode, let’s do a little bit of housekeeping. If you are watching on YouTube, and did you know that you can watch this podcast on YouTube, every episode that has a video component has that episode’s video from YouTube embedded directly on the page, just above the transcript.
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Make sure that you do stick around because I will be talking about next week’s guest as well. But this week’s guest is Jack Burrill. Jack is an actor, a director, an acting coach, and the artistic director of Unchained Theatre.
And we have a great time in this episode talking about Shakespeare. We nerd out a little bit about Shakespeare because we’re both pretty passionate about that. And also we learn a lot about Jack’s journey and how Unchained Theatre came about.
So I hope that you will enjoy this. I hope you will enjoy this episode. And again, I will see you on the other side of this episode for more information about next week’s guest.
Jack Burrill, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. You are the artistic director and one of the founders of Unchained Theatre.
And could you give me a bit of a rundown? What is Unchained Theatre?
[Jack Burrill]
So Unchained Theatre is a new indie group we’ve been, I guess, for the last five years operating. We started, myself and my business partner, Ruben Stewart, went to high school together. And during COVID, we got very bored and we started to watch, and don’t nerd me out, the entire works of William Shakespeare.
Recordings from Stratford, from RSC, from The Globe, from all these places. And we went, we love it. And so we sort of devised a plan that once restrictions were lifted, we were going to do something.
We were finally going to do something. And so what we did was we were with our local community theatre, who they were in need of something to happen for money. And we pitched the idea to build an outdoor stage and we put our first show, Twelfth Night.
And then from there, we’ve dug into the works of William Shakespeare. We love to put a modern theme on them. We love to sign the work.
I love his words, his stories, and everything. And we want to put them in modern contexts and interesting contexts.
[Phil Rickaby]
Of the Shakespeare plays that you’re watching on TV or on video, because there are so many, especially some great theatrical performances through the National Theatre and things like that. Did you have a favorite that was like, oh, this is the one that I can come back to?
[Jack Burrill]
Oh, oh, it’s yes. There’s two. There is one that was from The Globe.
I think years ago I had the DVD. It is Henry IV Part I with Roger Allum doing it. It inspired me to do Falstaff.
It was the one of the reasons I fell in love with that character. I watched that one over and over. And then the other one, just because it’s my favourite is Colm Feore’s King Lear in 2014, 2015, something like that.
That one I go back to a lot as well, because it’s my favourite play, because it’s my dream role. And then just the way that they handle that play, the way that they handle the madness, the way that they designed it theatrically, it hits all the marks that that play needs to hit for it to be effective. And that’s why I love going back to that.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I remember when I was in theatre school, and this is a very long time ago, on TV, I think TVO was showing this cycle of all of the history plays. I think the National had done it, had done the whole thing, which is like, imagine that undertaking, like, oh, we’re just going to do all of the history plays.
You know, all of the sequels as well, you know, like all of that stuff. There’s a lot there. And I remember that would also, man, I remember there was a production, I think it was at the National, a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, within the last couple of years.
And the thing that got me, I was like, wow, these guys in England, they’re not too precious about this stuff, because it was basically modern-ish. But when the mechanicals at the end are meeting, and they’re looking for a calendar, they go out into the audience, and they get somebody’s phone. Oh, I saw that!
So brilliant! They get somebody’s phone, and they find the calendar. And then they actually, you know, they’re like making fun, they’re like, oh, they find their cheeky pics on the thing, and they look over the guy, they take a selfie, and they give the camera back.
I thought that like, that is just like, just like subverted, just like, just do it. You know? Yeah.
[Jack Burrill]
Well, yeah, I love it when they, that, when Shakespeare plays take risks, in classic theatre as a whole, take risks. I, once again, love Shakespeare. I’m personally tired, I guess, of the pumpkin pants and rapiers.
I think that these plays, everyone talks about how timeless they are, and how they still speak to modern day. I think we should bring these plays into the 21st century, instead of like, remembering it as it was.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you could do almost all of the plays. You don’t need costumes, you could do them in like, modern dress.
You can have people in jeans and t-shirts, and just do the play. But I also really like when we’re able to like, just put it in a setting that works with the content, with the play. You know, I’ve seen people, you know, they’ve taken big swings, and big conceptual stuff.
I’ve been involved in some of those, and sometimes, you can see the concept get in the way of the text. And I always hate that. It’s like, yes, have the concept, but it needs to work with the story.
You know what I mean?
[Jack Burrill]
Like, we can’t set Hamlet on Mars, if there’s no reason for them to be on Mars, you know?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Now, you’ve said you started with Twelfth Night, and you recently did, it was I think the five-year anniversary of Unchained Theatre, you recently did a production of Twelfth Night at Toronto’s Assembly Theatre, which is a very small and intimate space.
Yeah, that is. What’s it like performing that play in a space where you are kind of on top of the audience?
[Jack Burrill]
I love it. I love small theatres. The smaller, the better.
The intimate, the better for me. I love the closeness, especially as a performer, as a director, I love getting in those spaces. That play specifically was fun, because it is so physical, because there are sword fights, and jumping around, and hiding, and just mayhem for about two and a half hours.
I think that was part of the fun, and the adrenaline that the cast sort of had when we did the show was, are we going to bump in? Who’s going to happen? We were always on our toes for the entire run, which made the play just feel a lot more in action, I think.
That’s what I loved about it. I think about these plays and the ways we’ve done them, how would we do it on a bigger stage? I think that I wouldn’t do it in a bigger stage, because I like the way we operate.
I like the aliveness. Actors should be scared all the time.
[Phil Rickaby]
When you’re in an intimate space like that, it really makes things like soliloquies a little easier. Once you understand, oh, I’m talking to the audience. Literally, I’m talking to the audience.
They are me. They’re my brain. I’m having a conversation with them.
When the audience is right there, you are actually having a conversation with them. You’re making eye contact, which is a terrifying and exciting thing.
[Jack Burrill]
Yes. Yeah, it is. It’s interesting, too, to see the audience interact in those smaller spaces, especially in comedies.
They have a harder time, I’ve noticed, giving themselves permission to laugh. You’ll hear if someone’s got a particularly unique laugh or a loud laugh, suddenly they think, uh-oh, the spotlight’s on them. It’s interesting seeing the audience’s own vulnerabilities challenged during smaller, intimate productions.
[Phil Rickaby]
Comedies in Shakespeare are so interesting. I learned quite a while ago that the first scene is the audience’s opportunity to acclimate to the language. They will, but when you’re starting off, the audience sometimes feels like, I don’t know what’s happening, because they’re getting used to the language.
It can be difficult, especially in a comedy, when you’re hoping for the laugh, because you guys have been laughing in rehearsal, and then it doesn’t come because the audience hasn’t quite adjusted.
[Jack Burrill]
It takes a bit to warm up. I remember when I first started seeing the plays or reading them, it took me live, I guess, third, fourth scene. By that time, all the action’s in place, the plays are set.
You play catch up a little bit, but I think that’s part of the fun, when you’re not used to Shakespeare in classic theatre, is then you walk out at intermission, always at intermission, and then you go, okay, wait, so what did you get and I get? You piece together with the people around you. I think it builds community, I think, for people who aren’t for sure.
[Phil Rickaby]
I always appreciate actors who are able to deliver Shakespeare in dialogue as easily as delivering modern dialogue, just like when it flows, when it’s easy. I always appreciate that in a classical actor, where it doesn’t, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like they’re trying too hard, because it feels like they speak this language all the time.
[Jack Burrill]
Yes, yeah. I think one of my idols, I just, I watch him, and I just go like, I want to do what you do, but then it’s Tom McCamus, the way this guy delivers monologues, I saw him do Lear, and it was just, everything was so based in naturalism. And I think that’s sort of also part of the challenge with classic actors, is where do we blend naturalism, realism, for a lot of people nowadays, film, into these giant words, in these giant circumstances, you know?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, it’s a really hard, it’s hard to, it’s hard to, I think, actor, each actor needs to find their own comfort with the language, and it can be difficult to do, for some people. And you have, Unchained has done, you had your twelfth night. I know you did Romeo and Juliet.
What other plays has Unchained done?
[Jack Burrill]
So we’ve done, we did Merchant of Venice, a couple years ago, 2021. We did that one at the, recently known as, or was known as the Attic Studio. And then we did Henry IV Part I.
Well, actually, we did a combined sort of Henry IV, to try and end that journey, because we couldn’t do both.
[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yeah. When you’re choosing the shows that Unchained does, how do you make the decision, the determination of what you want, to what plays you want to do?
[Jack Burrill]
It’s usually, for me, it’s about what interests us as a company, specifically. You know, I, because we decided to do Merchant of Venice. You know, there’s like, well, why Merchant of Venice?
It’s, it has its problems, and it’s also not a very well-known play, in terms of the big three, and everything. Why do that one? Well, because it, there’s something there that, I don’t know, it just speaks to me.
There’s an intuition I have with these plays. And then, on top of it, it’s, we think of, well, what do we want to say? Because obviously, there’s the ticket sales, and everything we take into account.
But like, what is our voice right now? And what play best represents what we want to say? And how do we want to say it?
I think that’s how I like to go about it.
[Phil Rickaby]
When you were doing Romeo and Juliet, is there anything in particular that you wanted to say with that production?
[Jack Burrill]
Yeah. So, that was the one where I, there was, for me, I felt a very strong voice to it. And it came about very strangely.
I just was reading the play for something. And I was reading the opening monologue, the prologue, where he goes in fair Verona, where we later are seen. And then something just went in my head, and it went Verona, and it went Toronto.
I go, that’s it. And so, then we, I just, I wanted to do the play in Toronto. I wanted to bring, because a lot of the company are from Toronto.
They’re Toronto natives. They are of this culture. And it’s like, well, and they’re young.
It’s a play about young people in love, in the sweaty summer, in a city that either they want to break free from, or they want to engage in. I’m like, that’s it. And so, that’s what we wanted to say with that one.
It was sort of a love letter to the city that gave us this opportunity.
[Phil Rickaby]
How has your relationship with Shakespeare changed from the time? Because we all had to do it in high school. We all had to learn it in high school.
And everybody had their differing experiences with how that looked, and how much they did or did not enjoy it. How, what was your relationship like with Shakespeare when you were, say, in high school, and how did that change to now?
[Jack Burrill]
It was up and down. I remember the four I read was Midsummer. I think everybody started with Midsummer just because it was simple, at least in my school, simple enough.
It’s a good in. And then grade 10, it was Twelfth Night, which I loved. And that was the first ticking point, going, I might want to do this.
Because we, in tandem, we read the play, and then we watched a recording. And the recording was Stratford’s 2011 with Brian Dennehy. And I saw Dennehy do Toby, and I went, I want to make the play.
And so I ended up, that’s who I ended up playing Toby, because of Brian Dennehy. And then we did Romeo and Juliet. And I didn’t like it.
I did not like that play for a very long time. I just thought overdone and all this stuff. But I found what’s special on it later on.
And then we did Henry V, and that was great. Men loved all of them, mostly. And I loved like exploring them.
My relationship changed because I had a teacher that inspired me. He was also our drama teacher. He was an English teacher who ran the drama department.
And I saw, we did Much Ado About Nothing for a show. That was my first Shakespeare ever. And just the way he directed, and the way he talked about the plays, and the way he taught them, that was what was so interesting to me, was, you know, I never, I don’t know, 16, 17, whatever.
I never felt to that extent about anything in my life besides going home, or Christmas, you know? And seeing him just like completely illuminate when talking about these plays, about a scene, about a character. I was like, I want to know how that feels.
And then I see it live. See it at Stratford, see it at Soulpepper. And then that’s when it really took off.
I know, I got to know these plays. I got to be a part of this world, the Shakespeare world. I got to be in it.
[Phil Rickaby]
I remember when I was in high school, you know, we were doing the Shakespeare’s, the required Shakespeare’s. And I kind of felt like we, that we needed to reverse the way that we did it. Like, we, they forced us to read it, and they made us read it out loud, you know, which is terrible.
High school students reading Shakespeare out loud, not knowing what any of it means, all of them reading in monotone. And then we talk about it. And then at the end, once we’re done the play, maybe we’ll see, go to see it at Stratford, maybe we’ll see a live production.
Maybe we will watch a video. But I’ve often felt like, listen, people have to see it first. Because it’s not meant to be read like literature.
You have to like, have somebody like, who understands the language, read it. And like, perform it. And then you can sort of like, get in and analyze it.
But to do it the other way, to have the students read it out loud first, is just a, is a recipe for making people hate Shakespeare, which is really what happened to, I think I was the only person, and the only reason why I really enjoyed Shakespeare, because number one, I knew from the time I was a toddler that I wanted to be an actor. And I watched a bunch of Stratford recordings on television, on CBC.
[Jack Burrill]
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, and you’re right, because there’s not a lot of people who like, have the thorough line in, if they just like, it’s like, I mean, it’s like some actors doing cold breeds of a play they’ve never heard of. It’s just like, well, what am I doing with this? And then also, to read it, and then to be instantly forced to analyze it, without having really any time to sit with it.
And I think that’s all great art, you just need to sit with it for a little bit before you just, you tear it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Is there, have you done the play that you’ve always wanted to do? Not yet. Okay.
What is, what’s the play that you’ve always wanted to do?
[Jack Burrill]
I want to do King Lear more than anything, more than anything. I love that play. I love that character.
I think what it, there’s so much you can do with it in terms of, especially the actors and the way the dynamics of the daughters and everything about that play is perfect to me. I love that it is epic, but at the same time, deeply intimate, you know, with how these characters interact. It’s, you know, there’s blow winds and crack your cheeks and all the storm and everything.
But at the same time, it’s just, it’s a family that feels broken. And I love it. I love the fathers and their sons and their daughters.
I just, the way it speaks about family on an epic scale is what I love.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. There’s also the aspect that Shakespeare understood this, because you see it in so many of his plays, just to nerd out entirely, because Shakespeare understood the idea that the king and the land are one. So you see in a play like Macker’s, there’s actually a speech about how the, there are earthquakes and there are clouds and the crows, and there’s all this sort of stuff because everything is wrong at the top.
But it’s sort of the same with Lear. As soon as this starts to happen, things go wrong in the land. And it’s because the king sits atop the land, the king and the land are one.
So everything goes badly when that’s destabilized. And it’s so epic once you start to get down to that, because that’s a belief that the Elizabethans would have had at the time, that those things are intrinsically linked.
[Jack Burrill]
Yes. Yeah. And what I love about Lear in particular, when this happens and things go wrong and the storm happens, it’s the moment, I always, when I direct, I always talk to the actors, like there’s one line, I think, that can define a character or one speech, especially in Shakespeare.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be the one that they say. In this case it is. For me, what sort of defines Lear’s journey is it’s after the hobble when he’s in the, or when, no, it’s after the raging and he’s in there and it’s just before poor Tom and he goes in and everything there.
And he goes in boy first and he does the poor naked wretches wheresoever you are to bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. How shall you unfed, your unhoused heads, your unfed sides, your looped and windowed raggedness defend thee from seasons such as these. And he goes, I’ve taken little care of this.
So now we see who he is. We see an old man who has regrets, who’s living with what he hasn’t done. And I think Shakespeare, I’m a huge fan of that TV show, Slings and Arrows.
It’s like, it’s my favourite show. I probably watch it once a month. And William Hutt’s character, he talks about how Shakespeare takes you through the ages of man.
And I, you know, I’m thinking about that. And especially in their connection to spirituality, particularly for me, the big three is Hamlet, MacBeth, and then King Lear. And especially for a person living, particularly a young man, but I think that’s sort of, it’s anybody because you live with, Hamlet’s a younger person who fears that God is watching him and he’s judging him.
And he’s a young man who has to make a choice. And his whole dilemma is, what do I do? What choice do I make?
And then we go to MacBeth and we talk about the, it’s, what do I do now that I’ve made this choice? And then we go to King Lear and it’s, what do I do with the choices I haven’t made and will never make? And I think that’s just what I really like.
Sorry, that was a big rant. No, no.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that’s, you know, these are incredible things to wrestle with, because I think that every writer puts themselves into their work, right? And, you know, Shakespeare did, there’s themes of how, you know, we know that he grew up on a farm, the slaughtering of animals was disturbing to him. Talks about blood in a very dissolute, like a visceral way, like blood affected him.
There’s so many things that he’s, imagery that he’s put in from his life. And I think it’s very affecting and likely he’s asking these same questions that you’re talking about in these plays.
[Jack Burrill]
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting you talk about the blood.
Cause you think about like all of those times it wasn’t like Beth in particular with the hands, right? Like that’s, that’s a very real experience. Somebody went through though, having like, what do I do with Beth?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. But speaking of these plays, I want to sort of jump to Hamlet because you’re, you are going to be performing, you’re going to, Unchained Theatre is going to be doing Hamlet in August and you’re currently doing auditions for certain people to fill out the cast.
So tell me, what can you tell me about, about the way that you’re looking at Hamlet right now? I’m so excited.
[Jack Burrill]
So, well, I, so there’s, there’s one actor who I met who’s wanted to do the play for a very long time. And it was kind of like my sort of, okay, we’re going to do this one. We’re going to do it.
The one, you know, because it’s always the play is in a lot of ways daunting. Cause I mean, our uncut it’s four hours long. It has the Hamlet has around a thousand lines, no matter which way you cut or slice it.
But at the same time, I’ve been reading it over again. It’s one of his closest, he has to naturalism dialogue in, in modern theatre in terms of the way that there’s a, like, there’s a lot of natural back and forth with characters like the Watchmen at the beginning, like Hamlet with Gertrude, um, Rose of Cranston, Guildenstern, like there’s a lot of modern theatre techniques and storytelling in that play, which I find interesting. And what I’m going to, I’m thinking of the play is from design wise, I think the costumes it’s, it’s about signifiers for me for who these people are to Hamlet.
What does he see them as, you know, in colours? What is a Claudius is a one, a green, he’s a red. What does he see the villain in his life, Ophelia White, things like that.
And then I had a great conversation with my professor. And it’s something I think maybe isn’t touched on very much, or maybe it’s just like, because the play is so massive, people just have to select one particular part of that play and go. But I often forget how important religion and spirituality is to these characters.
I mean, these are God-fearing Christians. I mean, we have the moment with Claudius alone, and then that preceding moment with Hamlet, what does he do? And I had this, there was this great quote that my professor said about the two clays, because I worked on this play in theatre school.
I did that monologue. And we talked about how Hamlet was sort of the early 1900s, late 1800s, sort of the birth of Freud and with religion and everything, it’s about the birth of psychology and sort of the switch over with religion. And then Lear is about sort of the now play, about God’s abandonment and everything, and everything feels like empty in this role.
So I was thinking about that. I was thinking about, well, maybe there is something or someone watching these people all the time. And so we wanted to feel like that.
And we want to, you know, more than anything, I think it’s not the debate about the play. It’s to be or not to be. Is it spiritual or is it supernatural?
Is it madness or is it cold, rational thought? Is it violence? You know what I mean?
It’s about the debate is what I want to really do with all these things in mind.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned like the absolute massive size of this play, the massive length. I mean, I remember when Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet came out, and I my first thought when I got to the end of that movie was he’s really demonstrated why this play needs to be cut a little bit shorter.
So there are scenes. I’m sure the Elizabethans love some of these scenes, but they are too long.
[Jack Burrill]
Yes. Yeah, they are too long. Sometimes the play can feel completely uncut a little on Shakespeare’s part.
Self-indulgent.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Jack Burrill]
How good I can write. You’ve got both. But I think it’s with all Shakespeare, but Hamlet, really, it’s just you got to make a choice on what to do with it.
And so because everybody’s got an opinion on these plays.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yes.
[Jack Burrill]
Everybody’s got an opinion and you’re not going to please everybody. So just do something with it.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think sometimes you have to embrace the fact that you are going to be able to please everyone. You only have to please yourself. And if you want, all you want is for that audience to lean forward.
You know, that’s all you want. That’s all you really need. You can’t.
If you’re going to be just trying to serve everybody, nobody’s going to be happy. I remember doing a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream many years ago, and there’s the line near the end of the play, the lovers have been discovered. And, you know, they’re like, well, was the Duke here?
And so the line is, yay. And my father. But we just said somebody say, say, yeah.
And my father and the number of people who were like, did you say, yeah. And we were like, well, yeah, because it’s kind of spelled the same. And also everybody got it.
Everybody, we even, you know, people loved it. Like people liked that people like when you can’t serve the purist sometimes, you know? No.
[Jack Burrill]
And I mean, I don’t think you really should serve anybody for these plays. I mean, I understand we hold these plays up to a standard because they’re classics, because they’re the best. I hold these plays up to a standard, but like, I don’t know if we, we don’t hold the new plays up to sometimes the same standard.
We don’t hold sometimes our own work as writers and everything. We just, we were always told as writers, just do the play, write the play that you haven’t seen, you know, write the movie, write the book, write the thing you want to see, read, hear, whatever. I think the same thing should be thought of as with Shakespeare, a classic theatre, do the Hamlet you haven’t seen.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I agree. And I think, I think it’s like we were saying earlier about, about how, you know, sometimes I think the things that we see when they’re doing Shakespeare in England, that they are less precious about it, that we are here. They’re willing sometimes, I think, to just like do the play any which way and in a way that, that here the purists get up in arms about, but over there they’re just doing it because they don’t, they’ve been, I guess, because they’ve been doing it nonstop for like 500 years or whatever.
And, you know, they don’t, they’re not precious about it. I really kind of like that.
[Jack Burrill]
I like it too. And you’re right. It’s because they, they’ve had way longer with these plays.
And, you know, I’m sure that a lot of them maybe are sick of Shakespeare. They go, oh, him again. And it’s like, when, because especially because, I mean, England is a birth of so many great playwrights from so many different walks of life and, but they keep coming back to him because I think there’s still something to be said with them.
And unlike that, they don’t, they do take the risks.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. There’s definitely something to be said because otherwise we wouldn’t be still be doing these plays, right? There’s, the, the plays speak to each generation, each, each age, because listen, if nobody would, if, if Romeo and Juliet was not speaking to people, we would not do it anymore.
If there was the, the plays are strangely universal in a way that some of his contemporaries were not.
[Jack Burrill]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are still people who cry at the end of these plays, you know, people still, I still, I talked to, I can’t remember who I talked to, but I talked about King Lear and I cry every time I read it.
Every time I see it, how, how, how with Cordelia in his I don’t care what the production is. I still cry every time that happens. People still cry at the end of Romeo and Juliet.
And it’s because these plays still invoke like a, just an intimate human feeling that I think a lot of other playwrights don’t, especially of his time.
[Phil Rickaby]
One of the things that I think we sometimes forget, especially people who, who are involved in the theatre and things like that, we, we forget that some audiences are not as intimately familiar with these plays as we are. I remember years ago, I, I happened to like, I was talking about, about the Scottish play and I mentioned something about the end and somebody on Facebook was like, spoilers, I don’t know how it ends. And I was like, hold on.
That’s right. We know these plays inside out, but there are audiences who will come to this and it is their first time really seeing this play. And that is a massively affecting thing because yes, we know it, but we can’t always assume that the audience knows it.
[Jack Burrill]
That’s a really good point. And you know, I, I, I guess I never always thought of, because I know I’m so calm. And so you do, I guess you do kind of separate, you just go, especially in rehearsal, when in comedies and stuff, when you play the same beat over and over again, that’s going to get a laugh.
That’s going to get a cry because you know, you know, you know that the play works or that, that what happened with it works, but you, you’re right. You don’t really know until there’s somebody else who’s never seen it. And it’s in front of their face.
[Phil Rickaby]
But like, again, you can’t assume that the audience knows the play. And I think that that’s kind of exciting about a play. That’s as old as these ones are.
[Jack Burrill]
But it’s interesting that people still don’t know something that’s 500 years old and they’re getting surprised by it, but everybody knows like the finale of heated rivalry. It’s just like, it’s just, it’s funny what, especially in art, cause there’s so much what escapes people, what sort of is what they haven’t really gone into and the reasons why they, they don’t explore certain things in theatre and art. I mean, Shakespeare in particular, right?
Like the people just like they don’t.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. Now I want to talk about, about the importance of because Unchained Theatre is an independent theatre company and indie theatre is the place where, where new ideas and new talent sort of get to percolate and get to get experience.
How do you see as an, as you know, the artistic director of a, of an independent company, how do you see indie theatre in the Toronto ecosystem?
[Jack Burrill]
I think it should be given more attention, especially because a lot of indie theatre right now, most in the theatre, I would say is recently graduates of theatre schools. They are people, new people, they’re people who want to do their own work. Like there’s so much, there’s so many hidden talents in indie theatre and so many young talents in indie theatre.
And I think, I think that scope should be starting to go that way a little more because they’re doing the new stuff, you know, they’re doing the Shakespeare’s in something we’ve never seen before. They’re doing plays that we’ve never heard of because they, they wrote them, you know? And I think, I love that we have the fringe as a, as a great in, but I think there are lots of people who don’t do the French or they wanted, or like, cause they’re not original works.
There’s lots of people who just do plays that they love. And I think that passion speaks volumes that I think should be seen more.
[Phil Rickaby]
I really do. Yeah. And the downside of the fringe, there’s more people who apply than that don’t get in.
So it’s like, you know, it’s great to have the fringe, but it is, since it’s a lottery, uh, it can be very difficult if you’re not selected, you’re not, you’re not getting in. I want to talk about, I mean, we were talking about the fact that, you know, the theatre company was during the pandemic or at least you, the idea came, I guess it was during the pandemic, you’re five years old, but how, how has that Genesis and the pandemic, uh, informed the work that you do?
[Jack Burrill]
I think we never want to take it for granted again. You know, we had it and we had it pretty good for a little, for a while there. And, and then it just, it just, it went away.
Like for theatre people, people who love theatre, they love theatre. You know, it’s, it’s not, there’s, I don’t know many people like actors or directors or anybody who’s specifically in the theatre who are just sort of hit or miss about it, you know, like they love it. And then it was, it was taken away from us, our, our, our home, our sanctuary, our, our place of, of safety was, it was Gotham.
And so that’s something for sure that post COVID is like, we want to hold this dear. And I think, especially, I think in the Indy scene, maybe, but I think maybe theatre at large is we don’t want to waste the chances we have to put on good theatre.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I think that, you know, we, we hear all the time that the audiences have changed, that the audiences haven’t quite come back. And so theatre going has changed and what people, what people, you know, it used to be difficult to get people to leave their house, to not watch TV, to like, cause you know, we have to acknowledge that like going to see the theatre is a, is a thing you have to go home from work. You have to get changed.
You have to eat dinner or you have to find a restaurant to eat dinner before. And you have to go to the show. There’s all these things that you have to do beforehand.
And now after, you know, the pandemic time of like, really like sinking in and like watching TV, especially for people who maybe still work at home, it is difficult to get the momentum to go out. So it’s harder than ever to get audiences to come out.
[Jack Burrill]
Yeah. Yeah. There was a great teacher of mine, Jessica Moss.
She was a great playwright too. She didn’t, she had, she said something really profound about that in particular, especially as a writer. But like, I think like theatre at large was, you know, people don’t get free evenings anymore.
You know, they work, people work late or they, they have to grocery shop or they have to take care of the kids or something. And it’s like, you get a free evening and it’s like, yeah, I’m giving you my money. Yeah.
I’m giving you my time, but I am giving you a whole evening of my life.
[Phil Rickaby]
I want to enjoy my evening. I think we also, I mean, I think that’s important. Also Jessica Moss, very old friend, very incredible playwright.
But I don’t think we’ve seen enough of Jessica Moss’s work in this city and in this country. But what you’re saying there, I mean, we do know that people will pay for experiences, right? Yeah.
People will pay money to go to the winter market and the distillery. They will, they’ll go and they’ll pay like 50 bucks a pop or whatever to go see Van Gogh projections on, on, on the wall. We have to give people something that we have to give them the experience.
We have to, you know, somehow get them to know what the experience of seeing theatre is. We have to, if they are used to, they have to be reminded, we just have to give nothing. Like if they want to pay for experiences, we have to give them that.
[Jack Burrill]
We, yeah, you’re, no, you’re completely right. We do. And I think that the experience that the theatre is, is in why it’s so different from a concert, from an art gallery, from a movie, even it’s because it’s, it’s real.
It’s yeah, it’s real. It’s life. It’s all that good, good jazz, but it’s, it’s because it’s theatre shows you something that nothing else does.
I did the event, the thing that we, people need to go into the seats, get into the seats for is because they’re, they’re going to learn something about themselves, about the world. They’re going to, they’re going to find something out. And I think I had a great teacher of mine.
She, she said something, another person, I know so many people who say profound things. I’ve been very lucky to have these people, but she’s, it was a beautiful thing. She said in rehearsal one time and she said, you know, human connection is, is about my broken pieces fitting with your broken pieces.
And together we make some sort of whole. And I think that’s what theatre does. You know, we sit in the audience with our broken pieces, whatever it is, and we, we see a show and something within those two, three hours, our broken pieces connect to something.
[Phil Rickaby]
And that’s the event I think is we, we feel a little for sure. And there’s also the fact that like watching a play is so different from watching a movie. When I was in theatre school, first year theatre school, first class of theatre history, our acting teacher asked what is theatre?
And we’re all like, it’s the building, it’s the play. And you know, eventually he said, theatre is when the actor and the audience breathe together. And that is an experience that you don’t get in a movie.
The audience doesn’t breathe at the same time in a movie in the same way. And in fact, when it happens in the theatre, it’s so immediate. I remember a coworker, cause I work in a non-theatre industry during my day job.
And somebody asked, they didn’t understand why I liked theatre over film, why theatre over film. And I was like, because listen, you can watch a film and somebody gets punched and nobody flinches. Nobody reacts for the most part.
You watch a play and somebody gets slapped and everybody reacts. And it is so immediate and so visceral. And you don’t get that on TV.
You don’t get that in film. You only get that in that room.
[Jack Burrill]
It’s almost, we almost get desensitized to that stuff on TV. You know, cause I mean, I’m a big fan. I love the crime shows.
I love the Sopranos and all that stuff. But there’s so many of those shows on television that yeah, we do, we get desensitized to it. And then we forget that, oh, when it happens in theatre, we suddenly there’s something cognitive, I guess.
Right. This also happens in real life. People get treated like this outside of my, my screen.
And it’s, and it’s, I think that’s what’s so great about it is it’s also every time something happens in theatre, it’s, it’s also a reminder that this is, it happens in our reality. I remember I saw Othello with the late great Michael Blake. It was my, actually it was my first Stratford show I ever saw.
So there were big memories. But one side, there was a scene where he slapped Desdemona and I got shocked. And then at the end, of course, then with the pillow and everything and that production, they made it brutal.
It was brutal to watch, but then you think, and then on that same note, there’s probably a TV show or there was, you know, there’s Tony Soprano or one of the guys, and he did the same thing to somebody. And it’s just like, but it felt so much different. It felt so, you know, you scream and you squirm.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We have to be able to, to somehow bottle this or give this to people as like, what, like, why is this?
Why would you, why would this be a better experience just going to see a movie or watching like Netflix or something? It’s, it’s somehow we have to get that, that out to out for people.
[Jack Burrill]
Yeah. And I think it’s just, just trust us. I mean, in a way it’s a joke, but in a way it’s real.
Cause like, like I said, you know, especially people in high school, there was always the theatre kid thing, right? It was like, Oh God, the theatre kids are walking by again. And they’re all, they’re all singing song high.
What’s happening. It’s all that stuff. And it’s like, but if you only knew how good that felt to us and like trusted how that best feeling that how excited we are open, we are how good that feels.
Then you might go to the theatre.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. I want to make sure there’s a couple of things that I want to make sure that we talk about. We have a little bit of time left and I, this is important stuff.
I want to talk about you launching an acting coaching business. What, what drew you to coaching?
[Jack Burrill]
Oh, I think the same reason I have approached or I got drawn to directing and it’s because I’d seen, I’ve worked with some great on fire directors who like just watching them talk about the material and the texts and the characters and the actors, it gave me something. And then being taught by great teachers and directors and everything. But most of all I’ve loved, cause I’ve been able to work with, I mean, I only have a handful of students who are friends of mine who just wanted my, my high.
And it’s just, I love seeing when we find it, when we find the audition piece, when we find the monologue, it just, it clicks with that person. And the, and then they come alive and then suddenly the monologue, the text comes alive. And that’s a feeling I could chase forever is seeing these actors come out and do work.
Cause I think anybody can act. I think I do. I think that there’s an acting in all of us.
I think that acting is innately a part of our life, our world. We act for everybody. I think it, but I also think as me wanting to do acting coaching and classes and everything, there’s not enough theatre specific acting classes.
There are tons of great on-camera stuff that have been going around for years. And I think part of what you and I have been talking today, Phil, is that there’s not enough separate avenues into theatre besides going to the theatre. You know, I’m in an acting class right now that is play specific.
It’s like we’re working on a play during a scene, so different play and it’s amazing, but I don’t, I can’t think of very many other ones that are out there or very many intros in little things in the theatre. Play can be daunting, especially for a new actor. It’s a lot of words and it’s a lot of things to jostle with, especially actors who are used to the film side of things, getting two pages of a mini series of a Hallmark movie, whatever it is.
And I don’t, well, I think actors shouldn’t be, they should be afraid because that’s what’s so exciting about our work, but we shouldn’t be scared of our text and we shouldn’t be scared of place.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I think it’s interesting. We’re talking about how, you know, you feel like everybody is an actor, but it can be an actor.
And I think that the thing that keeps other people, keeps people who aren’t actors from doing it is a discomfort, right? They’re too self-conscious on the stage. It’s like, listen, I can always spot when I’m scrolling through my reels or on TikTok, when the thing that’s presented as a confrontation is actually a scene because they’re, they’re clearly acting badly.
You know, there’s always, that’s always like, Oh, okay. Yeah. A little bit of, a little bit of amateur theatre going on here.
You can really feel it because they’re not able to commit fully. They’re a little self-conscious and yeah, we need it. And people can be taught how to let go of that.
And so there is an actor in everybody. If they just find the right teacher who can help them release that.
[Jack Burrill]
Yeah. And I think, I mean, finding the right acting teacher. And it’s like, I mean, I think it’s like finding the right doctor, you know, like it’s like you, the work only goes as far as you two can connect to it.
You know, you can pay for an acting teacher who is really good, but if you don’t have that connection, I mean, you’re going to block yourself and that’s okay. You have to find your way.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there’s also, you know, you see it in the media all the time, the acting teacher who is like a, some kind of side torturer or something like, you know, again, find that acting teacher. It doesn’t have to be that way.
And if they tell you it does find a new teacher. But I also wanted to talk about the fact that you are, that you’ve written a couple of original pieces that you’re trying to get produced. Tell me about those pieces.
[Jack Burrill]
So one I’ve been writing since theatre school, it was, it’s a huge, it’s a play I’ve written. It’s about, it’s sort of my, my homage to those classic Williams and Miller and all those guys. Cause I’m a huge fan of all of them.
And it’s about, it’s about a writer who suffers from alcoholism, who reconnects with his, his daughter after the, his ex-wife passes away and sort of how they rekindle that relationship. He’s a, and it’s called what we leave unsaid. The whole thing’s about, you know, people who are so good with words and about language and everything.
What is, what do, how, if we use words, what are we really saying? What are we really not saying? And it’s, that’s a, that’s a one that I’ve really liked and I’ve worked on for a long time.
And then there’s another one. I am proudly a member of the Churchill Wellesley Queer Village. I’ve been here since July or so, me and my husband.
And so I wrote a play called Church Street Tango, which is sort of a, my love letter to the night scene about queer relationships, about struggling through addiction and everything through the eyes of a bar manager and how he navigates his, his midlife and everything. And it was my, yeah, it was my love letter to the people who helped me be me. It was to the place that helped me be me.
And also, you know, the things that destroy us even in this community. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. As we draw to a close, I wanted to ask you, again, I want to go back to Hamlet because like you said, you are having auditions at this time and you’re wanting people, wanting to find people to fill a number of roles. How can people find out about those auditions?
[Jack Burrill]
We are on Instagram. If you want to go do Unchained Theatre at unchainedtheatre.instagram.com, we are there. We also have email.
You can always reach out to our Unchained Theatre company at gmail.com. You can reach out and we love hearing from new artists. As of right now, we’ve had quite a few submissions from a bunch of different artists, which is super, super exciting for us.
So yeah, audition, reach out. If not this year, next year, we want to see new artists. We want to find cool voices.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. I want to say one last thing about Hamlet, and you may, if you don’t know about this and you go find it, you probably will both thank and curse me. Have you ever heard, and audience, please, you can also Google this.
Go to YouTube and search for Hamlet in rock. No. It’s a guess, maybe Finnish, maybe Swedish, hard rock production of Hamlet where they’ve turned the text into, I guess, early 90s heavy metal.
And you must look it up and it will torment you in the most wonderful ways.
[Jack Burrill]
That will either be the worst or best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It is actually both. Good.
We need more of that.
[Phil Rickaby]
Anyway, I do want to thank you for making some time to talk to me. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And I’m looking forward to hearing more about your company and your Hamlet in August.
Thank you so much, Phil.
[Jack Burrill]
I had a blast. I love just nerding out for now.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I’m going to talk about next week’s guest in just one second. But first, I want to talk a little bit more in detail about Patreon, because I literally cannot make this show without the patrons who’ve chosen to back me on Patreon.
For almost the entire 10 years of this program, I’ve been paying for this out of pocket. I don’t know if you know this, but even though I give this podcast to you for free, it does cost money. And since I don’t have any advertisers, I’ve been paying for this entirely out of my own pocket.
And it does cost money. Like I said, it costs money to have a website, to host the audio files and get them distributed to the places where you can listen to the audio. Editing software costs money.
And because I make little images for every episode, editing software for images, that also costs money. So if you want to help out, if you want to be part of making this show, if you want to help me to make this show, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. Patrons get early access to episodes and get to participate in conversations about the industry, about topics that maybe I wanted to talk about on this show.
And the more patrons that join, the more I will be able to offer to those patrons. So there will be new things coming, the more people who become patrons of the podcast. Becoming a patron is really affordable because I wanted to make sure it was easy for everybody to become a patron.
And I would really love for you to be able to help me to make this show. Just go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. Next week, my guest is Tim Porter.
Tim is the founding artistic director of Tweed & Company in Tweed, Ontario. And I love learning about new theatre companies and theatre companies that I haven’t heard of before. And especially I think really important are the regional theatre companies like Tweed & Company.
So make sure you come back next week for my conversation with Tim Porter.
