Kanika Ambrose

About This Episode:

This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby welcomes Kanika Ambrose, an award-winning playwright, librettist, and screenwriter whose work spans theatre, opera, and television. Kanika shares her path from writing poetry as a child to becoming one of Canada’s most exciting multidisciplinary storytellers, known for blending sharp social insight with bold, imaginative worlds. She discusses her three plays in production right now: our place, at Black Theatre Workshop, The Christmas Market at Crow’s in association with b Current and Studio 180 Theatre and Moonlight Schooner at Canadian Stage, in association with Necessary Angel and Tarragon Theatre.

This episode explores:

• Kanika’s creative beginnings and path to becoming a playwright
• Finding her voice in writing after initially pursuing acting
• How motherhood reshaped her creative life
• Creating space for Black women and Caribbean stories in Canadian theatre
• and much more!

Guest: ✍️ Kanika Ambrose

Kanika Ambrose is a two-time Dora Award winning playwright, opera librettist, and screenwriter.  Her play “our place,” was first produced by Cahoots Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille in November 2022 and received a Dora Mavor Moore Award for “Outstanding New Play” in 2023. She received a second “Outstanding New Play” Dora in 2024 for “Truth” which premiered at Young People’s Theatre earlier the same year.

Moonlight Schooner Tickets: 🎟️ https://my.canadianstage.com/overview/9330

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Transcript

Transcripts are auto generated, and may contain some minor errors.

[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 this podcast, I talk to theatre makers of all kinds, from directors to actors, to stage managers, playwrights, producers, and more. If they make theatre, I’m talking to them. Some of the people I talk to are household names and others.

I really think you should get to know. I only have two more episodes after this one, this year, and then I’m going to take a two week break. And I’ll be back in the new year with new episodes, and I will get to my guest this week in just a second, but I’ll remind you, stick around to the end of the episode, and I will tell you about next week’s guest this week.

My guest is Kanika Ambrose. Kanika is having an incredible year. If you recall my episode where I talked with Dian Marie Bridge from black theatre workshop in Montreal, they’re producing her play, our place.

Her play, the Christmas market is on at crow’s and her newest play. Moonlight schooner is on now at Canadian stage at co-production with Tarragon and necessary angel theatre. And you can see that at the Berkeley street theatre right now.

So remember, keep listening to the end of the episode and I’ll tell you about next week’s guest. But right now, here is my conversation with Kanika. Kanika Ambrose.

Thank you so much for talking with me. I really appreciate you making some time. This is, as we were saying, just off the air, this is a big fall for you.

You have the Christmas market at crow’s, moonlight schooner at Can stage. You have your play, our place at the black theatre workshop in Montreal. That’s three shows are basically happening at once.

How does that feel as a Canadian playwright to have that kind of saturation?

[Kanika Ambrose]
It’s definitely been filled with anticipation, a little anxiety. You know, how do I prepare myself and my family for all of that? We’re in the thick of it for sure, but it’s not unexpected.

I think things are going as well as they can be, you know, everybody’s healthy and unhealthy and holding up. And that’s all I can ask for.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Could you tell me about moonlight schooner?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, moonlight schooner is, it’s set in the fifties. It’s set in 1958, but in no way is it a period piece. It’s very alive.

It’s written as if it were today. Characters are lively, but it’s about three sailors who get stranded on the island of St. Kitts during a May Day parade, and they get up to some fun and some complications under the subject of imperialism, so yeah, that’s kind of it in a nutshell. There’s also a female character involved, all of their activities happen in her house.

Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Where did the inspiration, where did this play come from as far as like your, your writing of it?

[Kanika Ambrose]
It takes place in the Windrush generation, which is, it affected my family because my grandfather went to England at this time, so it’s had a huge impact on our lives and to this day. And some other questions I had about family members and our history around that time. So it was an excavation of questions that I had about my family tree.

And then also a book of poems by Derek Walcott called The Star Apple Kingdom. And it’s about these sailors that go on an epic adventure. And I had just had my first son, so I, I was very intrigued by like a big epic story for Black Caribbean men because I wanted to create something for my son.

And then it ended up being something entirely different. That’s not for them at all.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now that period that you’re talking about, that sort of like that mass immigration from the Caribbean to England, it is a very formative part of, and there are certain, certainly neighborhoods in London that are, are essentially that are made up of the people who came there from that end, their children, their grandchildren. And it’s, it’s sort of a suddenly picking up or having people come from the Caribbean to a cold wet spot and to do work that I guess nobody else wanted to do very formative for a lot of people and a lot of generations of Black English citizens, it obviously affected you and your family. What, what did you learn with, I mean, obviously this affects the play, but what did you learn that really informed this play?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I won’t get into the specifics of it because as I said, it will spoil the play a little bit. But, um, it, I, I was curious about why my, my grandfather left. He left a family of nine children and a wife back home and that caused complications in their lives that, that resonate to today.

And I had a wonderful relationship with him, but you know, it was more complicated for other people in the family. And I, I was like, he’s a really good guy. Like, why did he do that?

Because it just caused so many complications. And, and so that was my questioning is like, why, why would you make the choice to leave your entire family and go and then, you know, not reunite with them? So, so I guess it was like questions around that was part of what informed that.

[Phil Rickaby]
You’re, you’re known for your language, the language that you use. A lot of the people who’ve reviewed your work talk about the beauty of the language that you put into your plays. Migration and migrant women also feature in Our Place and Big Christmas Market.

So the movement, the migration of Caribbean women and Caribbean people is a big part of, of the work that you’re doing. It’s almost because a lot of these, these plays deal with migration. Do, do they form a piece of a whole?

Are they, do they feel related to you or do they feel very different?

[Kanika Ambrose]
They do are different, but I’ve had people say like people who’ve come to the previews or, or the dress rehearsal say they’re very different, but also in conversation with each other, because as you say, like they, there is a theme there and, and that’s on purpose. Like, it’s what I’m interested in is like, how do we land and how do we survive in the places that we are? And not even saying the Caribbean is not, you know, even where we’re actually found.

So, but you know that in itself. So it’s like, how do we, then how do we exist in this third space that is here? And Little Light Scooter does take place in the Caribbean, but it very much like touches upon issues that people here are dealing with, like in regards to the reverberations of complications of that past.

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, like you said, it is people who have chosen to leave the place that they were born, that they’re from. They’re going somewhere else when they are shipwrecked and where they, they have this, this happen. So they’re in the process of, of leaving the place they know and going somewhere else.

Right. And like you were saying, like that question of why people choose to do that, why they, what, you know, why people leave everything they know behind to go to a new place. I mean, that’s the story of immigration.

[Kanika Ambrose]
That’s the story of immigration. Yeah. But yeah, it is, but I’m, I should have said, so the sailors in Little Light Scooter are not going to England.

England is in the background of the whole thing. Like there’s, they talk about it. Some of their, some have relatives that gone, they aspire to go there, but they can’t, they’re kind of bottle of the barrel guys.

They, they’re, they’re not, they’re not the ones going to England, but it’s, you know, the, the, the looming imperialism and that the, the desire to go and what that would mean for them is kind of the backbone of that. They’re actually merchant sailors. So they’re doing something completely different.

[Phil Rickaby]
Completely different. Completely different.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
I was mentioning earlier, the language that you put into your plays, the layered speech and the, the rhythms and idioms and the, the, the distinct voices of the characters and, and a writer having a distinct voice is one of those things that everybody says a writer should know their voice, they should have a voice. How did you develop your distinct voice?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Good question. I guess listening was one of them. I am not Caribbean born.

I’m, I’m one of the, I was one of the first people in my family to be born in the country, the only person in my immediate family born in Canada. And so, and my parents were very involved in culture. And so I felt like I was very, I was very much immersed in Caribbean culture from a very young age.

And I’ve been surrounded by Caribbean culture and Caribbean people my whole life because my parents made it such a big part of my upbringing. And also I grew up partially in Scarborough. So I, I listened a lot and I had questions that I could ask or people wouldn’t answer.

And so I came to my own conclusions and this was my way of, of working through it, I guess. And how else did I develop the voice? As a teen, as a young artist, I was seeing a lot of plays.

I watched a lot of plays. I read a lot of plays. I, you know, just really buckled, honed in on what appealed to me and kind of what I practiced, listening and practice and, and, and watching.

And I think all of that contributed to it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now in, in Moonlight Schooner, addresses colonial violence against Black people, the Windrush generation, as you mentioned, how much you, I mean, you mentioned that it’s not a history piece it’s speaking to now it is set in the, set in the fifties, but it’s not a period piece, but how much research did you do into the Windrush generation in that period? Or was it, is it just what you learned about your family specifically that informed the piece?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I did quite a bit of research. I started with the, as I said, the poem, the book of poems, The Star Apple Kingdom. And a lot of what the writer Derek Walcott, he, he, he had a lot of references in there and I was like, okay, what’s that?

I don’t quite understand that. And so that started the, the, this, the spiral of research was like really trying to understand what he was pointing at and the struggles of the men that he was talking about. Lots of books, lots of conversations.

I, I, I spent some time in Dominica where my parents, my family’s from, oh my goodness, last year and tried to just excavate and ask a lot of questions. So there was, you know, the, the physical like book research. And then there was the, you know, the, the oral research as well.

[Phil Rickaby]
When you were like where your parents were from and you were, you know, asking questions and learning, were people forthcoming with answers to your questions or did you have to read into their subtext?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah. I, I mean, people also had like memory loss, like the people who are actually alive, who books that were prior to that generation are in the eighties and nineties. I’m like, you know, they had, they, they were sometimes telling their own stories that weren’t really what I was asking, but it was like, okay, I’ll just take what I need from this.

But yeah, certain, certain things that I was asking questions about, I was like, okay, there’s some hesitation here or there’s some judgment here. And, and I could kind of like, it helped to inform the characters. Cause I could, I could really start to understand, okay, these are some of the mindsets that might’ve been prominent in this time.

And here might be the reasons why.

[Phil Rickaby]
So a lot of, a lot of sort of excavation of like, of, of like for your own invention to figure out what the motivations might be.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah. Like I had to really, even the mindset for like, oh boy, it’s hard to kind of like dance around what this thing is about. But, you know, a lot of it has to do with like, what was the mindset of the people at the time, men, women, like, well, that caused certain things to be okay, certain things that aren’t okay now, why were they okay with this community at this time?

And so, you know, I had to kind of read into what people were saying. Might be like, okay, their attitude around this is kind of messed up, but why is that? What caused it?

You know, maybe it was England. And I’m saying too much or I’m really trying to like, I hope that this is actually useful and making sense.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s always difficult. It’s always difficult to like, to know how much to say, how much not to say. It is one of those questions, like how much, how much can we say about a play without spoiling it too much?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah. Yeah. This one’s tricky.

Cause it’s, it also is poetic. Like there’s, there’s a very large poetic component, like following from the book that I use as inspiration. So it is hard to speak about because a lot of it is an imagery.

[Phil Rickaby]
We’ve, we’ve, we’ve mentioned that the play is set in, is, you know, it’s the, it’s based in this period, but speaking to now, what do you hope that audiences take away from this play?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I would thought as there, as I alluded to, there’s some complex conversations in the piece. Conversations that I feel are not unique to me. I feel like it’s quite prom that some of the issues are quite prominent, but people don’t speak about them much like our place.

Like they, their issues, I’m like, okay, guys, like this is something that’s rampant in our community, but nobody talks about it because it’s kind of like taboo and I’m like, we need to have space to talk about these things freely. So I hope that it encourages people to reflect or, you know, have some certain conversations that need to be have and release some of the stink off of some of the things that we are carrying.

[Phil Rickaby]
We spend a lot of time not talking about important things. And this is like, generally it’s a very Canadian thing to not talk about important things and sort of, you know, assume that they’re going to be fine because we’re not talking about them. It doesn’t really do any, any good, but I think that’s what theatre gives us the opportunity to do to like have the conversation and let the audience sort of have that conversation and deal with the aftermath of having that conversation.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I’m like, that’s my job.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s like my whole job. We’re primarily talking about Midnight Schooner play or Moonlight. We’re primarily talking about Moonlight Schooner, but I would be remiss if we didn’t talk about The Christmas Market, which is your other play that is in Toronto at Crow’s, what can you tell me about, about that particular show?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Nothing that I can talk more about because it’s, it’s more like it’s in the migrant workers are kind of the foundation of a lot of the workforce. A lot of the produce in our country, but not really spoken about and the truth about their living conditions, about their treatment aren’t really known by the average Canadian. And I think that’s a really terrible, sad thing.

And I think they should be treated better. So any tangents, it’s about three migrant workers spending their first Christmas in Canada, on in Ontario, on a, on a farm that is, has become a Christmas market, but like, it’s usually a flower farm and they do like flower arrangements and blah, blah, blah. And you know, those little planters, but the, the farmer decided this year, we’re going to do Christmas arrangements and Christmas, like country Christmas crafts.

So we need these workers to stay, stay and run that and lots of complications.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing is I spent a number of years ago, I spent a little bit of time in some small towns outside of London, farming communities, farming towns.

And during this summer, during the summer on the harvest season, there are a lot of migrant workers from Jamaica and other places in the Caribbean that travel up there and they’re still separate from that community. They’re not part of the community. In fact, you can watch a town stop when like I watched, I was sitting, having a coffee and three black young men came riding on bikes through the town and kind of the whole town just sort of stopped and watched them go.

And I thought, this is, I mean, these people are doing your work. They’re doing the work you don’t want to do. Yeah.

And you don’t even give them a hello.

[Kanika Ambrose]
No. Yeah. They’re very marginalized.

Even like I live in an area. It’s not, I live about like 45, 50 minutes outside of the city. Not even that far.

And like go to the grocery store and like when they do their groceries, usually on Sunday, take a bus and then everybody’s like, what’s wrong with you all? You know, do you not know that? They make, they take the apples that you’re putting in your basket.

Like what?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so, it’s so wild.

There are all of these small towns. And I think that in some places it’s getting a little bit better because people are coming to the town and starting businesses that have a little more melanin in their skin, in some of the small towns, but it’s still a matter of a lot of towns where they’re lacking in color generally.

[Kanika Ambrose]
And yeah, but even, even like Whitby, Oshawa, like Curtis, like there’s, there’s farms there, like, I won’t name the name, but there are certain farms that are marketed for like, oh family, pick your own apples, pick your own pumpkins, and then people come like, oh, this is great. But then there’s like workers bent over kind of feel like, right. Oh, where your kids are like riding a donkey.

[Phil Rickaby]
Like this is not to me. I grew up out in that area, Durham region. I know how white those areas are.

And I know, I know how, how people can be with, with, with, with, with black people. My brother, I have an adopted brother. My brother is, is, is a black young man.

And he experienced that. We were, you know, that’s a thing that, that, that, that I grew up adjacent to and watched him go through. The way that, the way that staff change, as soon as you walk into the store, when you’re, when you’re there, the Durham region can be pretty bad for that.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s, yes, but it’s also changed. I’ve lived in Durham for, ooh, seven, eight years now.

Yeah. And you know, like right now it feels like it’s basically Scarborough. It’s really hard.

I was like, I thought I left Scarborough, but no, we’re, we’re right here. Like my son got his school pictures and like, like there are three white kids in the class of 15. So, you know, I’m like, okay, things are a little different, but yeah, you can still see it in some pockets for sure.

It’s not completely eradicated.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, but I mean, when I was growing up there, this is like, I mean, I’m an old man, it was in the eighties, things were not the way they are now, but well, I imagine, I can imagine.

[Kanika Ambrose]
I also, like I said, I partially grew up in Scarborough because I lived in Curtis for a bit and this was in the nineties and definitely a different place.

[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. But you know, as I, as I was saying earlier, these things, these things change, people move and, and I love, I love when I hear that like, oh, the, the, the class is, is not all white people now. There’s, there’s people from all over, which is, which is, is my favorite thing about Canada.

You’ve mentioned your son a couple of times, and I want to ask about how motherhood has affected or changed your writing.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Oh, it’s changed and affected everything. In, in a lot of ways, it’s a gift as it used to take me a lot longer to write things and to get to the point and figure out what I wanted to do. And it made me just be like, I’m really short on time.

I don’t have time to second guess myself. I don’t, I’m like very sure. I’m myself now.

And I, I, I, I write with assurance. I write with clarity. I’m able to like in the early days when you’re no, you’re nursing and not getting much sleep.

Like I’m able to use those moments to process things and work through things, or if I’m out for a walk and processing, and then I’m able to just get to what I need to do. So it’s taught me how to be efficient and that I’m stronger than I think and have more capacity than I think. I think those are, that’s a major way.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, obviously like, you know, motherhood takes a bit more time than writing or, but it needs must when there’s a young child, where, what points of the day do you find the time to write?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I have two sons. Um, one is two years old. Oh my God.

He’s not two years old yet. He’s almost two years old. So instead of one is four.

So they’re both in. Now they are in daycare and school. So I have a routine of writing when they’re in daycare and school.

But before that I would do in that nap time in the night, whenever somebody could come over and watch them for a bit, whenever I could. So, and, and that was the bulk of it. Cause my first son was born in the pandemic, so he didn’t get into daycare until he was two and a half.

So all of those years to figure out how to write it in that home.

[Phil Rickaby]
You would have to, you, you, you, you, there’s no other option. I just, I want to tend to this conversation. I’m going to go on a tangent here as the mother of a child that was, that was born in the pandemic and didn’t get into daycare for a number of years until after the pandemic, um, what is surprised you about what might be different with a child that, that didn’t have as much socialization with other kids as a, as a really young, young baby, you know, like, I’m not

[Kanika Ambrose]
sure if it’s just his personality or, or if it would have been any different. He, he’s extremely smart. He asks a lot of questions.

He catches on to things very quick, but he does, he is a, he is more shy than my other child. And I’m like, I’m not sure if that’s just their personalities. Cause since he was born, he was quite a temperamental person and the other one was just more unmeanable.

So I just don’t know. I, I, unless I had like two that I could have like sent one to somewhere else more than one, and then they, then it wouldn’t, you know, it’s hard to tell, you know, yeah, yeah, I was, how many of us would have taken that deal to go to that place where there was no pandemic?

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, send them to Jupiter. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I want to ask you about, we mentioned like you have three shows, you have two in Toronto, one in previews, one that’s opened a show that is in opening shortly in, in Montreal, these, this is the kind of thing that any playwright would really relish this time, is this just the thing where the stars aligned or it did, was there anything in particular you did to have this moment happen or, or how did, how did this moment come about for you?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, I, honestly, I did not plan it. He was like, how did you do this? I’m like, I didn’t plan this.

I had two shows that were ready and they were being developed in convert. They were, they were commissioned by two different companies. And this is when one of them was a Christmas show.

So it had to be in the Christmas slot. And the other one, Necessary Angel, we don’t have like a physical space. So we partner with other companies and Canadian stage had this time slot and it was like, okay, this is the time slot.

This is the space that you want to be in. Are you going to take it? Like, obviously, yes.

It just so happened that that was what happened. And, you know, I had lots of conversations with all the companies. They all knew that this was what was going to happen.

And there’d be, you know, I wasn’t like being shady about it or anything. They knew and had time to kind of prepare and we had time to prepare ourselves and make sure that I wouldn’t be in conflict and it seems to be working.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I’m curious if the companies have, I mean, you can’t really speak for them, but is it your sense that they have seen dual production within the city as a, as an asset to be able to, to talk you up and talk the shows up?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I don’t, maybe right now, it’s crazy right now. There seems to be a lot of buzz about it, which is like, you know, I try not, I try to like, I don’t know, just exist in my work and just do my work and not pay so much attention, but I think it must be good for the companies to have that much, you know, excitement around the two pieces. I don’t know.

I don’t know. They seem to be selling well. I think that’s what they want.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I think that’s definitely what they want. I think it’s really great when, when we can have buzz. Buzz is a thing in, in Canadian theatre that doesn’t happen as often as we might want.

So it’s, it’s great to have, especially with someone who, for anybody who might be watching on YouTube can see two Dora awards right beside you there. And the ability to, for each of these companies to say Dora awarding playwright, Dora award-winning playwright, Kamika Ambrose is an asset in itself. And then to have buzz, which again, like I said, so rarely happens in Canadian theatre.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, I think so. It’s, it’s definitely like there are times and I’m like, whoa, I feel kind of, this feels really cool. Like, I feel like I’m riding a wave.

And then I’m like, you know, just focus on what you have to do, Kamika, and let that be their problem or their whatever’s, but I just have to make sure that I put forth the best work that I can.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I would like to turn away from the plays for a second, these two plays or the other plays. And I’d like to ask you a little bit about yourself and your theatre journey.

One of my favorite things to do is to learn about how people came to the theatre. And so I’m curious about how you first got interested in theatre and how you decided that it was going to be a thing you were going to pursue.

[Kanika Ambrose]
So, as I mentioned, I’ve been involved in like Caribbean culture for a long time. And that’s like dance, storytelling, singing, like cultural performance. And my dad was a drummer, a dubbed poet, and I’d been like involved in performing with him since I was a really young child.

And when I was in high school, I would be the one that did the like Black History Month assembly, the performances. And then one of the drama teachers was like, oh, that’s called acting. Like, that’s acting what you’re doing.

And I was like, oh, you know, I got involved there and it was very progressive drama teachers who I went to an all girls school and they were like, young women need to be able to speak for themselves and and tell their own stories and own their voices. And that was kind of the start of the journey of like my desire to tell my own stories and and learning what the impact of telling stories and kind of like excavating underneath, you know, the surface of things and went well. We did well at Sears Drum Festival.

What is that? What is it called? NTF.

We did well. And then I got to go to Summerworks and then from there met folks for Paprika, did Paprika Festival and on and on and on. And when I went to Ryerson, oh God, I keep saying the wrong name thing.

I went to TMU.

[Phil Rickaby]
Listen, I’m going to let you I got to let you off the hook at the time that you did the Sears Festival. It was called the Sears Festival at the time that you went to TRU. It was called Ryerson and that and we’re working hard to change the name in our minds.

[Kanika Ambrose]
But I know it’s what you do when you’re defaulting to the wrong thing that it was. It was wrong that it was called that, but it was called that at the time. That’s where I went.

And I was an actor for a little bit, decided it wasn’t for me and that I needed to go back to telling my own stories. And that’s what I did.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’ll ask what what what was it about acting that felt like it wasn’t for you?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I felt like I was doing it because I was good at it. Like, I think I was a good actor. I was getting a lot of work and I kind of quit while I was getting a lot of work.

But I was I feel like I’m doing it because I’m good at it, but I don’t really love it. And it’s like one of those things that you have to really love doing because it’s a hard it’s really hard. I’m like, if you don’t love it, you better get out.

So I went to see the mountaintop obsidian was doing it. And I was like, wow, they I don’t mean to do. They are brilliant.

Like, why should I do that when the people were so great at it and clearly love it? And I was like, my my stories and the way that I tell them are unique to me and no one else does it that way. And so that’s what I should do.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. So when you decided to go back to telling your own stories, was it was it plays that were the thing that you that you wanted to do or did you consider prose or novels or anything like that?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I didn’t. I only considered plays.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s not a bad thing as a writer myself. That is where I go. I go to plays every time, every time I think I could write this as a novel, I guess I can’t.

I can’t. I just.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yes, I want to. Well, and yes, and then I I’ve also done opera, which I really love as well. But that that was later.

Like, I didn’t know that people could write opera until later. Like I was in my late 20s by the time that happened.

[Phil Rickaby]
So did you did you did you go to study playwriting? Did you go like some some colleges have have programs or did you just buckle in and do it?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, no, I just did it. I did a bunch of playwrights units and I did. I did.

I was in residence at Obsidian as in residence at Cahoots. But I think that really was my my training as a playwright was just like testing things, throwing them at the wall, workshopping thing. I self produced a little bit as well.

And that was it. That was my that was my training.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. What did you learn about workshopping? Because I think it’s something we don’t do enough of in this country.

I don’t think plays get workshopped enough. What did you learn about workshopping while you were doing it with with Obsidian and Cahoots?

[Kanika Ambrose]
I learned a lot. I learned that I’m actually quite good at taking what I need. You know, people like to offer a lot and like, you know, there’s always the questions and you know, people talk and like my mind picks out what I need from it and is very good at getting rid of what I don’t.

Forming it into something else. So I find it a really good. It’s useful for inspiration that’s kind of indirect.

Or, you know, it’s useful for sparking new ideas or hearing something in a different way that opens something up in a way that it wouldn’t have if it if it didn’t happen. So I find it really useful. And like, as as I said, like as it as someone who trained as an actor, I often hear the voices or like I’ll read them out dramatically, you know, so the only voice I have in my head is my own.

And so it’s useful to to hear it from somebody who’s closer to what the character might actually be and see if the language is actually right in that audi.

[Phil Rickaby]
I always find it for myself when I’m reading something out loud. That’s when I find out, oh, this this this this is too clunky. I don’t figure out that it’s too hard to say or something like that.

Yeah. But from having it in front of an audience or having it read by other actors and then hearing an audience, I usually get, you know, we have to the question and answer after we have to do that. But I usually get what I need by hearing how the audience reacts like, oh, they’re they like this part.

They’re reacting to this part. They’re riveted. They’re they’re not.

They’re like, that’s telling me everything that I need to know. And sometimes the the questions after are less they’re less valuable to me often.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Same, same. Yeah.

And if it is a workshop that you get a reading after, then there’s that as well. You get to hear it and, you know, feel feel the vibe of the audience. Same thing with previews, except I find previews a little more anxiety inducing because what is it about previews?

It’s like it’s the show. It’s like almost the show, but there’s still a room to do things. And it’s, you know, just the anticipation of like, oh, there could be something that I have to change.

Like, oh, is it is it there? Is it not there?

[Phil Rickaby]
And also feeling just like very exposed to previews, feel like like they should be the opening, like because there’s an audience seeing it. And so it’s like it’s an opening, but not an opening, which is weird.

[Kanika Ambrose]
To me, it feels like it’s part of the run, like, you know, some companies, you know, might see it as like, this is the time to, like, make sure that it’s perfect for opening or that not perfect, but it’s ready for opening. And I’m like, for me, it feels like part of the run, but a weird part of the run.

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, it’s no longer no wonder that it’s a little stressful, like because, again, they might call on you to say we need to change something and then you have to go back. It’s a writer mode.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Right. Exactly. Exactly.

And with two shows, it’s a little it gets a little clunky. I, you know, I haven’t had the opportunity to have this problem. I was like, I haven’t two shows premiering at the same time before, but the previews is definitely posing an interesting problem of like, oh, this shows in second week of rehearsal.

So my mind is there, but then this one’s in preview. So my mind also needs to be there.

[Phil Rickaby]
When they’re in rehearsal, how involved are you? Are you do you go to rehearsals or are you done? Your work is is away from the rehearsal.

[Kanika Ambrose]
It’s been different for both shows. The Christmas record, I was in rehearsal a lot more than I usually am, and it was just because it we were working through some problems together and or not problems, opportunities fill up, let’s say. We were from discovering some opportunities that we needed to work through together and I needed to see it because the space was just different than what I had in my mind.

So not in a bad way, just in a different way. And so it’s just like, OK, I need to be in there to let the solutions come through collaboration. Whereas Moonlight Schooner, I went for the first full week just to be there for table reads and discussion and unpacking things and questions and opening things up.

But now that they’re into staging, I’m there less. I will go. I’ll go probably once this week and once next week in case there are things that you know, things that I can offer as an outside eye.

But I won’t really need to be there intensively until like Tetris.

[Phil Rickaby]
When you mentioning like being in the space because the space was different than you had envisioned, what kind of changes like was it timing? Were there were there actual like things that people said that had to change? What kind of shifts had to be made within the space?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Well, and if you ever talk to Sabrin, she’ll tell you that my plays tend to be like a movie. And so, you know, I invent all these spaces in my mind. That’s like for Christmas market.

There’s like they’re inside the trailer where they live and that there’s the Christmas market. And then there’s two or three different outdoor spaces. And the reality is it’s in the studio space.

Oh, crap. So which is narrow. And yeah, it’s just like there’s not the space for all of those things to happen, which we knew.

But I was just hanging on and being like, you know what, let’s see what we can make happen. And that’s what it is. It was let’s see what we can make happen.

And then I’ll adjust as needed. And like, you know, there’s not a separate like there’s not separate bedroom spaces. Can you guess?

So how are we going to make it so that these things can happen? Like, OK, so kind of like that, making it work with the space that we have, which was the space it always was. But my mind was in TV.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, and the studio space at Crows is not huge. It’s a very intimate space.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yes.

[Phil Rickaby]
To work in. Has the intimacy of that space surprised you? Because it can be as a performer, being really close to the audience can really be a surprising and shocking thing sometimes.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, I think it’s working really well for this play. I think it surprised me how well it worked, you know, so I think that’s that’s what it is. It’s like I’m like, oh, you know, I we can make all of those spaces work and all of the things that I had in mind.

It’s just about, you know, the little things that we can do to adjust and and and create the intimacy. So and the intimacy doesn’t really need to be created because it’s there.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, you can’t you can’t deny it because it is very much there. Yeah.

Yeah. You have these two shows that are they’re going to be open at the same time. So I’ll ask you first about The Christmas Market, then I want to ask a little bit more about Moonlight Schooner.

For The Christmas Market, what are you what would you count as like what you want an audience member to take away from that play?

[Kanika Ambrose]
First of all, I’m like, I really want people to have fun. Like, yes, it’s about migrant workers’ rights, but it’s a comedy. And I think that I just hope that people can see the humor in it because there are some really, really funny moments like there’s humor in every situation, even if it’s horrible.

So I want people to have fun and also to start thinking about if they’re not already like where your Christmas like things are coming from a little bit more.

[Phil Rickaby]
And no, absolutely. Those are big questions that we should really be thinking about. Yeah.

And sometimes I think in the in the rush for that season, we sometimes forget and just take expediency over the right thing. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. And for Moonlight Schooner, I have two questions about that. The first one is what has surprised you about that play in this process?

[Kanika Ambrose]
That whole play was a surprise. I had no idea. Like, I thought I was just writing like a joyous, fun piece about sailors going across the Caribbean and it was just going to be like a great time.

And it got really like deep, like the there’s a lot of complicated conversations in it. And it’s it’s what is it? Oh, my.

It’s surprising how beautiful that is, but how many layers of complexity it can uncover in a group of people. Like you think it’s like one thing and then there’s more and more and more. It goes deeper and deeper.

You’re like, oh, my goodness. So it hits different every time I hear it. And I just realized that it will do that.

I don’t know what an audience will take away from it because there are so many things, you know, it can in so many ways that it can. It’s also funny. That’s like anyone who knows my work.

It’s always funny at some point.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I think that’s a great I mean, it’s a great gift to give your audience to give them funny, but also things to think about. Right. Also things to to really affect them.

You said you don’t know what audiences will take away from the play. Is there anything in particular that you would like them to take away from it?

[Kanika Ambrose]
Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Like.

On a on a deeper, I guess, level, just like thinking about even though this is primarily a story about men, how the women in the world in the time were affected in their in their lives and how we they continue to be affected and, you know, the implications of other people’s decisions on the lives of these women.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Kandika, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you giving me some of your time.

And I’m looking forward to seeing both of these plays.

[Kanika Ambrose]
Thank you.

[Phil Rickaby]
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