Kathleen Welch is Bringing Dark Celtic Mythology to the Toronto Stage with Siofra
About This Episode:
Kathleen Welch is a playwright, composer, director, and actor, and one of the founding members of The Spindle Collective — the Toronto-based company making some of the most compelling horror theatre in Canada right now. She joined Phil to talk about Siofra, Spindle Collective’s latest show, which opens at the Red Sandcastle Theatre on June 17th. Rooted in the Irish mythology of changeling babies, Siofra is the second in a trilogy of folklore-inspired horror plays that Kathleen has written with Spindle Collective co-founder Natalia Bushnik.
The conversation moves through the rich terrain of folklore and what makes it such fertile ground for original storytelling — from Romanian demons to Germanic winter witches, and now to the west of Ireland in the 1860s. Kathleen talks about the collaborative writing process she and Natalia developed during COVID, why writing with a trusted partner makes all the difference, and how Siofra surprised even its own creators when the humor started emerging in rehearsal.
Kathleen also talks about the Dead of Winter Festival, the horror theatre festival she and Natalia launched in partnership with Eldritch Theatre, why genre theatre is a powerful way to bring new audiences into the room, and what she believes makes horror such a naturally feminist form of storytelling.
This episode explores:
- The mythology of Irish changeling babies and how it shapes the story of Siofra
- How The Spindle Collective was born during COVID from a shared love of folklore and horror
- The Dead of Winter Festival: what they learned in year one, including surviving a polar vortex
- Why horror is uniquely suited to feminist storytelling and bringing new audiences to theatre
- And much more!
Guest: 🎭 Kathleen Welch
Kathleen Welch is a playwright, composer, director, and actor. She is a founding member of spindle collective, which focuses on the creation of horror theatre and dark folklore epics. With Natalia Bushnik, she co-wrote and composed the music for their Dark Mother Trilogy, made up of the plays SAMCA, síofra, and spilleHOLLE. SAMCA received numerous grants and accolades and, for its Toronto production, Kathleen was nominated for a Toronto Theatre Award for her role as Prava. Kathleen and Natalia recently completed their full-length version of spilleHOLLE after the ten minute version won “Gold” at the Grand River 10-minute Play Contest. Apart from their trilogy, spindle collective also created Dead of Winter: The Toronto Horror-Theatre Festival in association with Eldritch Theatre. The festival had a sold out run this past winter and will continue as an annual event! Kathleen’s play, Bluebeard’s Wives is currently being developed by spindle collective with guidance and support from The Vault Creation Lab. Apart from her work with spindle, some select credits include performing as the Creepy Musician in Eldritch Theatre’s production of The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom, directing Riot King’s Dora Award winning production of Suddenly Last Summer, and composing the music for Just Across the Causeway (a radio play supported by the CBC Digital Strategy Fund). Kathleen holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Windsor and is passionate about multidisciplinary theatre and plays that feature dangerous, amoral womxn.
Learn about Siofra and buy tickets: https://natbushnik0.wixsite.com/spindlecollective/about-3
Connect with Kathleen and the Spindle Collective
📸 Instagram: @spindlecollective
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast, and on Stageworthy I talk to theatre makers of all kinds, from actors to directors to playwrights to stage managers.
If they make theatre in Canada, I’m talking to them. Some of the people I talk to are household names, and the rest are people that I really think you should get to know. Jumping straight in, my guest this week is Kathleen Welch.
Kathleen is a playwright, composer, director, and actor, and one of the founding members of The Spindle Collective. Kathleen is one of the creators of Spindle Collective’s hit show, Samca. And Kathleen joined me to talk about their latest show, Siofra.
Siofra is The Spindle Collective’s latest horror offering, and you can see Siofra at the Red Sandcastle Theatre from June 17th to 28th in Toronto. Now here’s my conversation with Kathleen Welch. Kathleen Welch, thank you so much for joining me on Stageworthy.
It is such a pleasure to have you on the program. There is so much to talk about today, and there’s a lot of things that I’m really excited to talk to you about, because I love the aesthetic of The Spindle Collective. I love the kind of theatre that you guys are creating, the stories.
We’re here mostly to talk about the new show, Siofra, which will be coming up very shortly. So why don’t we start out by talking about that show? What is that about?
[Kathleen Welch]
So Siofra is sort of, it’s the second in a trilogy that me and Natalia Bushnik, who runs Spindle Collective, that we’ve written. So this one, Siofra, is set in sort of 1860s Ireland, the west of Ireland, and it’s kind of a little bit spooky, unsettling story that deals with the myth of Irish changeling babies. So yeah, changelings being these fairy children that, in myth at least, your child would be stolen away and replaced with a fairy child.
And so that’s sort of the mythology that we have sort of based our story around. It’s an original story, but just using that as inspiration. And yeah, like I said, it’s the second in a trilogy.
Our first one, Samca, was set in Romania, and it had to do with Romanian folklore. This one’s set in Ireland. The third one in our trilogy, Spillahal, is set in Germany.
So it’s just sort of exploring folklore and mythology and kind of demonic creatures and things like that.
[Phil Rickaby]
The whole changeling story, I mean, fairy stories in the first place are a rich tapestry to play with. Because once you get away from the happy Tinkerbell type fairy, you get into some really deliciously dark stuff. What was it about the changeling stories, the changeling mythology that drew you to this subject?
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, so initially Nat had sort of an idea, and Natalia had sort of an idea about doing a story based on changelings. And part of it was based in real history. There’s this story about, it’s actually set later than our play.
It’s like around 1900 of this woman who they thought was a fairy changeling and got sort of murdered by her, by the people in her town in rural Ireland. And it kind of was the inspiration, playing with mob mentality and the idea of how you, how mythology sort of plays out in reality of what people perceive of it. So in our play, the ideas are explored without necessarily being confirming one way or another of what’s true because these myths exist for a reason from real things that were sort of happening.
And with changeling children, often it’s like a child who gets ill or is acting different than what they were previously. And so they want a reason, a way to explain that. So yeah, ours, Nat sort of had the idea initially.
And then we had been working on Samca for a very long time together. And then she kind of invited me into being like, maybe we could tie these together. And we got really excited about sort of the exploration of motherhood and just how that connects to folklore and different stages of being a child, having a child.
Yeah. It kind of stemmed from that.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, there’s a whole, the idea that the whole idea of the changeling child is terrifying for the parent, like the idea that your child has been stolen away and this strange child has been left in its place. I mean, of course, if we were to go, you know, what is the more likely reason for these children? I probably think had autism and things like that that were not understood at the time, but they’re very real terrors that parents had.
And, and so the, it is like I said, like we said earlier, it’s a very rich tapestry. You’ve mentioned you work with Natalia and, you know, Samca was the first show that you did together.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yes. We worked together for years and I wrote music for another show hers previously, but that was the first play that we fully wrote and created together.
[Phil Rickaby]
So what, what is the founding story of the Spindle Collective?
[Kathleen Welch]
Well, Nat and I were friends for years. We were roommates in university and we’d always sort of worked together and things, but Spindle Collective kind of came about in COVID like many things where you have time on your hands and things that you were us being more actors first, being unable to act, finding other avenues. And we had like, both of us had written stuff before as well, but now we sort of had the time and space to think about what we really were interested in.
And both of us love horror and folklore and how that combines sort of like non-traditional horror, where it’s, it comes from mythology and it’s unsettling without necessarily being jump scares or anyways, it was stuff we were both fascinated with. And then in COVID we kind of had the time and wanted to create something because we were feeling a little stifled, having not been able to do shows. We were people who were in shows all the time and then we didn’t have them.
And so we created, we were writing like back and forth on Google drive, like just sending scenes. And then we were so on the same page that it was a really nice, easy feeling. And I think both of us felt, I know we both talked about this, where both of us have written things on our own, but it’s so much easier to write with a partner, especially we’re on the same page so much of the time, but it’s like one person stuck, you read the other person’s stuff.
And now you have another way of jumping off where I’m much more likely to get stuck. If I’m just doing it myself, I get in my own head a bit more. It’s also really nice having positive feedback all the time.
You have your writing partner and might look down on your own stuff, but you love their things. And then they’re like, Hey, I love this. And you’re like, no, I shouldn’t get rid of everything I’ve written because it is good because this person likes it, who I trust and I believe has taste.
So it’s been everything we’ve written together has been a really nice process of excitement and jumping off of each other.
[Phil Rickaby]
There is certainly a great benefit to having another voice that’s not your own. The number of times that I’ve written something and I’ve been like, do I have to just throw everything out and start over?
[Kathleen Welch]
Yes.
[Phil Rickaby]
And sometimes you just need a friend being like, no, I mean, it’s so important because I really, I believe that in every process, there is at least one point where you as the creator are like, well, this is all garbage. It has to go. Even if last week you thought, no, this is good.
This is okay. It just is part of the process. Definitely.
I want to ask you a little bit about Spielhoch, which premiered at the first Dead of Winter Festival last winter. And the reason why I want to bring that up is that play deals with one of my favorite characters from the Yule-like folklore, which is Perchta. How did you first become interested in that particular character?
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. So I was kind of, we had, when we did Samca and then Siofra and they were combined, we were sort of thinking we’d want a third one sort of in a different place. And I, so I was just looking into Germanic just because we deal with folklore and obviously the Germanic fairy tales and folklore is kind of the big one.
And there’s so much there from different regions. And so I was doing a little bit of research and I really love the idea of the, yeah, the Christmas witch idea is very interesting and also really neat for interpretations of her being positive at different points in the mythology as this positive figure that then descends post-Christianity into a demonic kind of figure, because that was the only way they could deal with her. And so I think we were really interested in the, all the different versions of her.
If you look up Perchta or there’s Frau Hulda, Fila Hul is another, there’s all these different names for different regions, as well as just different iterations of the same person who is a little more positive in one, a little more of a positive spiritual figure that is just promoting people, kids being productive and ones that are like, this is the demonic witch who, you know, carves open their stomach and fills it with strong stones if they haven’t finished their spinning.
So it’s, we really liked the multitudes that this sort of character contained and we could pull little bits from all different mythologies.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think it’s the freedom that we have in the modern era is we can look at the pieces of the character and put them together. I always enjoyed the idea of how many of the, I refer to them as the Yule monsters, the Yule creatures around those areas. Their function around that time of year seems to be to teach people how to survive the long night, how to survive the winter.
Perchta had a particular meal that you were supposed to eat at her feast. And if you didn’t, that was one of the consequences. That was one of the things that could lead to her disemboweling a member of the household.
And I love how these things which are frightening are also designed to teach a valuable lesson about living in a cold climate.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. No, and I think, yeah, something I really like about, and this has been true for all three of the shows, is folklore versus a straight up fairy tale that might have a beginning, middle, and end. These folklore stories really lend themselves to original stories because they don’t have a beginning, middle, and end.
They’re characters, but they exist not in one story. They exist just as something to draw inspiration from. So when we initially did Samca, Samca is this figure, but she has no stories.
There’s no story associated with her. It’s just, this is what she is. And so it’s been really nice to pull out of these folkloric monsters and creatures our own original stories that seem to be, we’re inspired by our little research we get to do, and we can throw in all these little things, but it’s not, they get to be their own original story and almost create for us a background or a fully fledged story for these characters that exist on their own.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, there is definitely something about the characters in those regions, which are just there. Even if you go over to Iceland, you’ve got the Yule Lads, the Yule Cat, Grilla, the Ogre, they’re just there for parents and other people to use as tools and in stories rather than like, well, they did this and they did this, they did this. It’s just like under the surface.
And that is something that makes storytelling with those characters really kind of fun and exciting. You mentioned, Samca was the first play that you guys wrote together and the first in this now trilogy. And when you wrote that, the idea of this being a trilogy had not yet entered your mind.
[Kathleen Welch]
No.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s a relatively recent idea.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, it was kind of once we started working on She-Fa together and we were like all these things sort of tying between them and we got excited about the progression. They’re not sequels per se, they’re individual stories that are quite different from each other with some underlying similarity in theme a little bit, but in subject matter. And I think those ways, the fact that folklore in so many different cultures, you find all these similarities where they didn’t have any contact with each other, but people make their own folklore and they are drawn towards the same things.
So I think once we were sort of partially working on She-Fa, it kind of made the trilogy come together. And then Spielahal was written first as a 10-minute play specifically for this 10-minute play contest that we did. It’s actually where it first premiered, was in Brantford this past fall.
And we wrote it just being like, oh well, we want to apply to this 10-minute play contest, maybe we’ll play with this. And it was so easy to write a little 10-minute play and we were so excited by it that once we did it there, we wanted to do it for Dead of Winter and that was the plan. And then just this past month, we developed it and created it into a full length show that we’re planning on doing at some point.
But yes, it sort of happened organically that it turned into this trilogy, which I feel like has happened in a lot of different things in our writing where we don’t know where it’s going to end. And then once it comes together, we’re like, were we hinting at this the whole time? Because it just happened in that way.
[Phil Rickaby]
Is there anything in you that says we can actually go back and strengthen those thematic ties? We could go back to Samca and massage that a little and make sure the through line is more clear?
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, maybe. I think Samca and Schriever is also, they’re big cast shows, which is not necessarily well thought out for indie theatre. They were not written with that in mind, we were writing what we wanted.
And then we were like, what are we thinking? Having these 10 and nine person cast shows. So Samca already, we’ve had a couple of iterations of it where we got into a festival thing that was traveling.
So we were like, how can we alter this show for three and make it a different thing? So I think we’re always open to changing it. And that’s what’s kind of about producing and making your own plays, because we can just edit as we see fit.
If we’re like, we get into this festival, we’re going to make it work in this length of show or this many people. And yeah, we might go back and just go, oh, how can we tie these together in a more organic way? Because they were written at different times in our lives that maybe, if we ever do, which would be a dream of mine to do an outdoor, all day thing where you do all three of them in a row.
But that’s the kind of thing I love to do. I don’t know if that could ever happen, but maybe there would be more little tie-ins that we’d find. Because we want them to be individual shows.
We don’t want it, again, it’s not a sequel. It’s not a thing where you need to know anything about the previous shows to watch. They’re individual stories with new characters in a new place.
But it would be nice to see sort of when all three of them are kind of fully done, how does that progress? How does it work?
[Phil Rickaby]
So it’s more of a cycle than a trilogy.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yes. Trilogy is probably the wrong word, but we’re figuring things out. We haven’t produced the whole thing.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, who has? Who does a cycle in these days? And also, like you’re talking about their large cast shows, which rarely get done, but quite frankly, someone’s got to.
We’ve got to do those things. We’ve got to get back to big cast shows and wherever possible. Get back to our epic stories that we can tell with like…
[Kathleen Welch]
I love a big epic story. I also love a big… None of our plays are really, really long or anything, but the whole idea of being able to see all three in a row is just up my alley.
I’m like a mini-series… I love a long mini-series. Something you can spend your whole day doing or watching.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s binge theatre.
[Kathleen Welch]
Exactly.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. We could binge some theatre, which is awesome. Now, you mentioned a little bit ago, it’s kind of a couple of times, the Dead of Winter Festival.
So we should talk about that. What is the Dead of Winter Festival?
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. So we just started it this year. We’re very excited about it.
It’s sort of a partnership Findel Collectum has with Eldritch Theatre, which we’re also doing Siofra at Red Sand Castle as sort of a guest member of Eldritch’s season, which you know all about. Absolutely. And yeah, so we had sort of talked to Eric a bit.
Both me and Nat have sort of different connections to the festival theatre thing. She, years ago, went to this Minneapolis Horror Festival that she loved, and she always talks about what a wonderful thing it was with all this horror theatre. And I, for quite a few years, produced an outdoor sort of performance festival that was like this camping theatre festival called Dark Crop.
So both of us are big fans of the sort of festival atmosphere and the bringing together of a lot of different artists coming from different places. So right now, it was our first year, pilot year with it. So we only did one week of it near the end of January.
And we had sort of two rotating nights of three short plays and one musical act. So it was sort of a night of four things. And then we, yeah, we rotated.
So we had our Evening of Fear and our Night of Terror. The whole thing sold out before we opened, which was really, really nice, because I think we put it there partially because it’s kind of a dead season for theatre. So we’re like, either it can work for us because no one is putting on shows, or and so then that’s what people want to go to, or it will really not work for us because no one’s putting on shows because no one wants to see a show then.
But it seemed to work for us, which was great. So next year, we’re hoping to we’re definitely going to do it again. We’re hoping to do two weekends of it and maybe have a sort of, yeah, a bigger run, an extended honorarium because we we did it with an honorarium thing, not knowing if we would be able to sell this thing.
So yeah, we we took applications in September to October, and then we picked our shows. And it was very exciting because it’s like, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. You never know with with with submissions, you get to see parts of it, but you’re reading a script, you don’t know how it’s going to be when it plays out.
And I think that’s kind of beautiful about festivals, you can have a big mix of like in ours, we had very, some really seasoned artists who had huge resumes and had been working in theatre for years. And we also had really, really young people who were coming in and hadn’t produced that much of their stuff yet, which is a really nice, it had a great atmosphere, I felt even though we had some crazy weather, like the snowstorm, it was, I, our final day of it was just this, it was what they called the polar vortex day.
[Phil Rickaby]
I recall, yes.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. So a lot of people couldn’t come, but people still did. And we still had like, more than half the house was there.
And the people who were there were in it. So yeah, I, I’m really excited about doing it again. We’re gonna look at, we’re, we definitely want to try to see if we can do two weekends of it, but we’ll look to see if we can accept more artists or what the plan is.
I’m not sure exactly, but both me and Nat and, and Eric and Emma were really, really happy with, with how it went. And we’re good friends with Eldridge. So it’s really nice to keep doing stuff together.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think, you know, there is a hunger, I think, for genre theatre in this city. I think recently, I think it was Glenn Summey was complaining about the lack of genre on our stages. You know, you’ve got Spindle, you’ve got Eldridge and not too many other people are doing horror.
There’s, no, it’s not something that, but there’s obviously a hunger for it. People want that experience.
[Kathleen Welch]
And it’s a good way of like, horror, for instance, as a genre is super popular in movies. It’s very popular in books. There’s like little ghost books in terms of genre being popular.
Little ghost books is the cutest bookstore. It’s all horror based. There’s like a specific romance bookstore that exists and it’s huge as well.
Like genres are things that people like in a lot of other formats, like movies and books. So, you know, if we want to bring in people to watch theatre, who are not theatre people, that is a way in, which we had sort of thought of with, we were hoping that for the horror festival. And it did kind of come true that people who are looking for horror will then come in, even though there are people who would not choose to see theatre, they’ll choose to see it because it’s already, it’s horror, which is something that they love.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It’s a genre that draws them in. They’re already predisposed to seek out that in movies.
And so seeing it in the theatre is something interesting and new for them. And probably in its own way, because theatre is theatre, more visceral.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. And it’s, it’s very different. Like, again, like the little, the pieces that we had in Dead of Winter were very different from each other.
Some lean towards more in the horror comedy thing. Also the ability to like using practical effects for things like horror often uses effects in film. And you can’t do exactly the same things in theatre that you can do in film, but you can do different things.
And sometimes it’s just a feeling of horror or dread. Other times it is, how can we use practical effects? Like we had the one show that, you know, they had their one thing and they’ve got a prep, but they’ve got their fake wall and they’re going to punch through it at the end.
And how can we in a low budget, right in front of you still have these moments that are in horror and put them on stage? Because I think it can just be done in such different ways. Even like Spindle Collective and Eldritch, we’re good friends.
We do not do remotely the same thing. We both appreciate and love each other, but there’s different, they’re very, very different versions of what horror is.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It’s so, they’re very different styles. Eldritch has the, the, the Eric Wolf aesthetic, which is a little bit more Cthulhu and puppety.
And I, I picture Spindle Collective as the, the dark woods at night kind of horror, you know, a little bit of Blair Witch, but a little bit, you know, less shaky camp. One of the things, you know, the, you mentioned the visceral nature of the theatre and how in horror you could make the slightest effects can have, can be so effective. I remember doing a production of Macbeth a number of years ago, where in the Macduff family scene, we had, I think there was a baby.
It wasn’t a baby. It was just wrapped, but it had just a little bit of balsa wood in it. And so the murderers gave a little snap in the entire audience, just in a way that you don’t in a film, right.
In a way that you don’t in a movie, because it’s the sound is right there. And to watch an entire audience, just like viscerally shudder and react to recoil. You can’t get that in any other, any other genre of.
[Kathleen Welch]
No. And like, yeah, the simple practical effects that someone can pull, pull off that, like we had, yeah, Jeff Dingles play, it was very funny, but it had this moment where he like ate a rat and it was just, you could see the sort of like, it’s definitely made it of like plasticine or something like that, but it like stretched and you could see the gore of it. And it was perfect, even though it was a simple effect.
It was, you could feel everyone there being like, ah, what is that? Why is this suddenly very real thing in front of me in? Yeah.
So it’s exciting to see. And I think that’s, that’s the exciting part about the Dead of Winter Festival, because I’m obviously interested in horror, but the things that I think of are not going to be the same things that Eric thinks of or Jeff thinks of or anyone else who is going in because there’s just, it’s, it’s a genre, but it’s a huge genre with so many different things that it can be.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s a large sandbox. And I like the idea of, of, you know, you, you could, there’s something about the fact that, you know, you know, this rat is plasticine, you know, it’s plastic, you know, it’s not a real rat, but the magic of theatre is that we’ve said it’s a rat. And so the entire audience believes in the moment, they suspend their disbelief, it’s a rat.
And then it, it becomes something horrific, even though it’s obviously not a real rat. It’s just that this thing that theatre does.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
What did you learn from the festival last year that surprised you?
[Kathleen Welch]
I guess it didn’t surprise me in some ways, but it did in others that like with the polar vortex that happened, the desire for people to do theatre. And I think Eric called it where we were like, okay, we’re not going to cancel this show. Like we’re debating whether we should cancel it or not.
But then lots of people are already in the city. They’re not driving anyways. And it was kind of like, okay, let’s leave it up to our performers.
If, if one person like from a show can’t come in or doesn’t feel safe coming in, Eric was like, I’ll just do magic tricks. Like, and everyone came in and like Susan, our one act, like she was, we flipped the order of one because she was trying to get there and the streetcar wasn’t coming and we’re waiting at the door and she’s just covered in snow, but she’s there because that’s how much people want to do it. And obviously it is because it makes sense because always people are doing it for like next to no money.
So that’s like, you want that not to be true, but like so much of indie theatre, even if you get, you get happy when you get paid, but if you try to break it down to being like, what was my hourly rate with all the producing and all the other things, it’s crazy. It’s not, so the reason we do it isn’t going to be for that. So watching everyone, both the theatre patrons and the performers just be like, yeah, a hundred percent.
I’m going to be there. And the patrons who didn’t come, it was like, literally people like someone was texting me being like, I can’t get my car. I’m trying to dig it out.
I can’t get it out. And still people came and people had fun. And once they were there, it was like, they were more in it because it seemed like this crazy event we were all doing together, which is kind of the festival atmosphere.
What makes nice income, not in comparison, but like a play on its own of like this, I don’t know the separation of being like, this is the company and the performers putting it on. And here’s the audience where in the festival thing, it was like the dress rehearsal. Everyone was watching each other’s getting to see each other’s pieces for the first time.
And the musicians that came in, not necessarily from theatre, the theatre world. So having the musicians be watching the shows and same with the actors, watching them musicians do it. So we just had a really nice feel of camaraderie.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You’re mentioning about indie theatre. You know, if it was about the money, we definitely wouldn’t do this.
But also the thing about indie theatre is that it gives us the opportunity to do things that we’re not able to do on other stages.
[Kathleen Welch]
Absolutely.
[Phil Rickaby]
There’s no, like we said, nobody else is doing genre except in indie theatre right now. So this is how the rest of the theatres learn that it’s a viable form.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. And hopefully, you know, include us in on it.
[Phil Rickaby]
100%.
[Kathleen Welch]
100%. Absolutely. But yeah, you do.
It is. It’s an interesting. Yeah.
Give or take of things, because I feel like always, you know, me and Nat, we would want our things to be, you know, picked up or have things that would progress us in a way that we could make more money from things. But you have those little fears of things of being like, oh, well, if someone else was to produce my play, though, they might do it in a way that I don’t want as much. Or there are things that like having control, although you might not get the money that you’d want, there’s something nice about being like, here’s our show completely, we can run it in a way that feels good and healthy for the performers who are in it.
And also, yeah, leaves out some of the stuff that we maybe don’t don’t care for in bigger theatres. So it’s Yeah, it’s nice. We had a reading last week with with the cast for Siofra.
And it had a really lovely just feeling of togetherness and people on the same page. We did a we did a photo shoot, we walked on the belt line, it was we it was so cold. Now it’s like 31 degrees, but it was so cold.
We were like, oh, we’re gonna get these people lay them on the ground and put leaves on them. And it was like freezing. But yeah, it’s just sort of it’s there’s there.
There are downsides to not having money. But there are there are upsides to having that sense of control and sense of creative, like, you get to own what you make and make it what you want it to be.
[Phil Rickaby]
I do think that there you know, I do hope as you do that if the other theatres delve into horror that they do take the indie theatres along, who have built it, because, you know, they kind of know what they’re doing. Don’t, you know, don’t don’t leave them behind. It would be a tragedy.
So yeah, for that to happen.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, it’s been it was nice. Just Eric, like an Eldridge just recently the Toronto Theatre Critics Awards, and they got recognized a little bit, which was really nice, because I think it’s so often doesn’t, like, people won’t even necessarily come see the Eldridge shows. And he’s always doing the coolest things.
And people don’t don’t always know about it. So it was really nice. They got Mel McNeil got got an award for costume design.
But then that like special citation of noticing that Eldridge has been doing really, really interesting, cool stuff.
[Phil Rickaby]
For sure. I know that there that there have been reviewers in the past that are uninterested in the Eldridge offerings, which is a tragedy, because they’re missing out on some really exciting stuff. And, and, and along with that, the readers or the the people who read their reviews and other articles are also missing out on it, which is terrible.
Yeah. I want to ask you, because you were are the director of a Dora Award winning production. Yeah.
Of Riot King suddenly last summer. We spoke about about that show.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, me, you and Lindsay.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Did being part of a show nominated for a Dora winning a Dora. Did that does that factor change the way that you see theatre in Toronto in any way?
[Kathleen Welch]
I think I know it’s difficult because it’s obviously everyone likes to be appreciated and noticed and have things like, oh, I’ve been working on stuff for so long. Even if it means nothing, in some ways of being like, you’re not doing it for that. It’s a good feeling to go, okay, hey, someone saw this.
And I know when we were there, and it was so exciting that Lindsay was nominated. I thought she absolutely deserved to be it was a crazy, crazy performance. But then, when we were there, we’re like, absolutely on the outliers, not thinking that she’s going to win, really.
And then it was it was all very, very exciting. And it was nice to have her appreciated and just nice to be a part of that. I think things get left out in the Doras a lot.
And it kind of can be a weird, a weird world where you don’t want to put too much stock in it. But you also you can benefit like it matters because you can benefit right the whole idea that you can, Lindsay’s going to be more likely to be seen at auditions, because she has that on her resume or vice versa, people will or like for the production itself, you’ll have people maybe more inclined or reviewers more inclined to go see it if you can say, look, hey, this is all this stuff that we we got.
So I feel like I’m torn with awards in general. I think, obviously, it’s such they’re inevitably like, it’s biased. That is the point theatre generally, you like certain things.
Other people don’t like certain things you’re never going to get. We’re all on the same page and a different thing of door jurors each year will pick wildly different things because they have different opinions. So I would eat Yeah, I feel like I’m torn where I always want to be appreciated because it’s just nice.
And I love a party. So going to the doors was fun. But I do think things get left behind and probably some more niche genre stuff is more likely to because it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea.
So you might have some people really love it and then other people really, really don’t like it. So you you’re which has been, you know, historically true in in films and the Oscars like this year was crazy for having horror nominated in a way that it just was never nominated.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Kathleen Welch]
For like anything for so it was just silence of the lands, which is on the edge. They were really calling it a thriller like there’s so I think as soon as you get into the genre stuff, it’s less likely in some to win, win awards and get that in literature as well. The amount of genre fiction that’s sort of looked down upon and not not going to be in the running for literary awards to the point that lots of books will try to even though they might fit a genre like sci fi or romance or horror will want themselves not marketed as such because it’s going to sort of take them out from being literature I guess, which is crazy.
[Phil Rickaby]
That is not crazy. It is the weird thing about about is a thing that happens. It’s a thing that happens specifically in Canada, because most of the funding comes from particular grants that the publishers get and they are looking to fund literature, which leaves the genre stuff, which might be the stuff that people actually want to read out in the cold.
Yeah. And it is the doors are a weird time because, you know, a show that’s winning an award, you know, the awards are in the summer and it might might have been in January or February and it could be a little bit of like our timing for this is like we’re part of technically will be part of next year.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yes. But we’re happening before the doors this year because we’re in jail.
[Phil Rickaby]
But you’re after the deadline for the door is this year.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. Yeah. Which some last summer I thought they would forget anyways, because it was in August.
It was so far before. But people didn’t forget about Lindsay, which was nice. But it was it was way far before the doors because it was in August of the previous year.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I want to delve a little bit more into you and your theatre origin story, which one of my favorite things is just talking about why people chose to do this. And you mentioned, you know, going to university and or going to theatre school and you were there, I think at the same time as Natalia and Natalia Bushnik.
But what was your first draw into theatre?
[Kathleen Welch]
Well, my so my family’s very musical and generally kind of Arxian would push towards those sorts of things anyway. So I started performing musically and singing very young with my family. And then.
I think, yeah, I started like most people, I would have done little bits of theatre stuff in school and then pretty early on did did like theatre programs, extracurricular stuff outside. So I feel like those kinds of things, it was a whole different world for me of how much I wanted to go to them because I was in all kinds of you’re in different lessons. You know, I had soccer in the summer and I had piano lessons and I did Irish dancing for a while.
All of these things were things I was sort of interested in. And then when I started doing theatre, and I remember this very clearly, the first one that I got so into was I grew up in Cambridge and there was this little theatre called Galt Little Theatre, and it did a children’s drama program like Saturday mornings. I hate mornings.
And it’s my day off. And I was so excited. And it was an amazing little program.
The woman who ran it like wrote little scripts. They were all original little stories. And we would like put them on.
And we’d have so each thing you come in and just being in these, you know, five to 10 minute plays, I cared so much. And it was so above like, other things, I would be like, I’m kind of sick. I don’t want to go to this thing.
I would have like a stomach flu and be like, I’m fine. I can go I’m gonna be fine. So I think it pretty early on was just the thing I wanted to do the most out of everything.
And then join like community theatre stuff again, mostly in musicals, which I still I love musicals. And I try to incorporate music in all kinds of things in our shows, even if they’re not really technically, technically musicals. But yeah, I did a lot of community theatre.
And then youth theatre, I think I was pretty lucky that in my area, there was a lot of Kitchener Waterloo region, there was just a lot of youth theatre going on. And so throughout my high school thing, I was like, I’d be in like three or four plays every night, I would be going to a community theatre ones. So kind of stem there.
And then I went to school in Windsor for acting, met Nat there. And yeah, it’s never I always have like 10 million jobs, but I always am doing theatre. And I sort of have been since I was quite young.
And I feel like whenever I’m not, I get pretty sad. So I got to keep doing it.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that is that is absolutely a fact. You’ve mentioned, like you mentioned, always having so many jobs, you’ve, you’ve described yourself as somebody who has about eight jobs at any given time. How do when balancing all of those things, how do you find the balance to make sure that you are you still managed to get your theatre time?
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, I would say, usually I get my theatre time at the expense of things like sleep and, and like being okay, and just having some days off. I yeah, to my detriment, I feel like I fit it in. And I also think I because it’s, it’s fun and exciting.
It gives purpose in ways that like, I was talking about this the other night of, like, if I’m kind of down, I would like, go to a bar and then like, right. And then it’ll make me feel like I have some, it gives me this purpose in a way that I kind of need and rely on. So the the money thing is tough.
So just trying to trying to figure out how you can balance the not being crazy stressed about money, having some time off, seeing friends and my family’s, my family’s very intense. So they took up a lot of time. No, luckily, with the theatre thing, a great thing about making theatre with your friends is that you get some time with your friends like me and that if we are working on a show, we’ll do Oh, we’re doing a read through.
And then after the read through, we’ll get drinks and we’ll chat about all the other stuff in our as well. So oftentimes, you get to have this sort of social aspect, along with the theatre thing. And that that does help because then you’re kind of you’re doing both.
[Phil Rickaby]
Do you find you mentioned living in Hamilton? Do you find the distance between the Hamilton and the Toronto scene difficult to cross?
[Kathleen Welch]
Sometimes I definitely I’ve been worse in in the sense that I’ve been on sometimes I’m in like, constantly in transit is what I feel like, if I have like, and I’m sure it will feel like that for Shefra. If I’m going there constantly all the time. Now also, I like to go train, I get lots done because I’ve got all my different little jobs.
And I’m like, Okay, well, I’ll get these hours done here. And this thing. So I usually get stuff done on transit.
I’m also very transit savvy. I had to take like three buses to get to high school, I’m very used to taking a lot of transit. So for a lot of people, it’s more of a hassle, where for me, I’m like, Oh, and then I cycle here.
And I do like, it’s kind of just always been a part of what I do. And then I really like the Hamilton scene here. I work at the at the Fringe Festival, which is lovely.
With Chris and Franny there. And yeah, I think it’s it’s a nice pace that I don’t I like I moved here a little over two years ago. I also live in a house, which is nice versus an apartment that does that does help take a little bit of a backyard.
Yeah, it’s lovely. So yeah, I think sometimes when I have really intense stuff going on in Toronto a lot. So around Christmas, I was like, I do I do murder mystery dinner theatre is one of my jobs.
And so I’m constantly I was going in and out for it. And that was a bit draining. So it’s just trying to be aware so that I am not crazy overbooking myself in Toronto.
I also just always try to tie it in if I’m coming in for something like a rehearsal. I go, Oh, well, this might be a good time to go see a friend after while I’m there. So I I rely on my planner a lot.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. The I just want to say the Hamilton Fringe is one of the warmest fringes in Canada. I premiered one of my shows there.
I put it up there with the warmth of Montreal. I don’t know if you ever been to the Montreal Fringe.
[Kathleen Welch]
I’ve never been in one.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s a very warm and welcoming festival. And that often comes from leadership. And Hamilton is much the same.
It’s a very warm frame. So I’m a fan of that festival.
[Kathleen Welch]
That’s where we premiered Samca in 2022, was at that Fringe Festival.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Kathleen Welch]
And yeah, it’s it’s it’s a really it’s crazy as all fringes are. But I’m front of house manager and it’s it’s it’s lovely. Everyone who’s a part of it is so lovely.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I want to ask about whether you think that horror theatre has a particular capacity for feminist storytelling that other genres don’t.
[Kathleen Welch]
I would say yes. Yeah, I think it kind of it lends itself to it in many ways. Somewhat.
I think horror always has the that sense of like the other in things. So people who don’t quite feel like they fit in are very at home in the horror genre. I think women like tend to love horror and things true crime that are dominated by women.
I think with this strange sense of like you have fear, but then you have control over it a little bit by being a part of it. And they also even in the things that maybe wouldn’t be called feminist horror films, it’s still women are often the main characters, which doesn’t exist in other genres as much like much more often. They would be secondary ones historically in films.
So I think the fact that horror historically often has women, a final girl or whatever, the main character being a woman, it’s makes it that you’re more likely to be drawn to it in the way that you feel like you’re more a part of the story or the story is more about you. And then in terms of folklore and folktale characters, monsters and things like that, I think there just are more female monsters and these characters that are like witches. And a lot of them are, it is just dominated by the presence of women.
So whatever, and this is my belief about things that are feminist anyways, whatever story they’re trying to tell, the most feminist thing is for women to be there. Like it’s the stories that bug me are ones that it’s like they’re not really a part of it or they’re just a little thing on the side where I love a moral women. I don’t need, I don’t need my stories to have a moral aura or a point really.
But the existence of female characters in the stories inherently makes it feminist because they’re there. That’s the biggest thing.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Kathleen Welch]
And there’s different ones in it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, also, I mean, you mentioned like a lot of the folklore has, you know, women who are the monster, the antagonist, the witch, and yet those are, those are roles that are, are those are names that are put upon someone who’s mostly misunderstood. Right.
I mean, if you look through the women who were, who’ve been called witches in the past, many of them were just misunderstood or a woman who lived alone in the woods or like, there’s so many different things that they were that had the moniker of which thrown on them. And I think that’s the same with monster. And so you’re right by having them there, it becomes a feminist story, especially if you can delve into who they are.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. And good or bad or both, most likely. But yes, just their existence and is kind of what makes it feminist.
I feel like just that, that’s what the story is.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Now getting back to She-Fra for a second, you mentioned you had a reading recently. The show is, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a different, it’s part of this cycle.
So it’s not a sequel and it’s part of the, the, the spiritual trilogy of, of, of, of the plays, the, the, the, the Dark, Dark Mother cycle. Is there anything that you have discovered recently in the play that has surprised you?
[Kathleen Welch]
Um, I think in this reading, especially with the humor coming out. So we often made jokes with Samca because it was so not funny, like to the point, like Nat always wants to be funny. And she kept trying to be like, maybe I can read this line in a way that will be funny.
And it just, there’s nothing funny about Samca. And we thought when we wrote She-Fra because She-Fra is the most, it’s the most grounded in reality, I would say of the three plays. It has more set in the real world with the fear of, of the folklore, the more magical world.
But it’s very much set in a real, in a real time and place in the way that the other two are a little bit less. And somewhat as a result, and somewhat because of the cast members who are all great, and I feel like really well suited to their parts, and they were getting a great rapport. There’s just a lot more moments for humor that came out, which was really, really nice to see, because it’s a heavy story.
It’s a very heavy story. If you, if you say what the plot is fully, which I won’t say, I don’t want to spoil it too much. But it’s a very heavy story.
So it was really lovely to hear the sort of these very human moments that made it quite funny. Because it’s just, it’s people in a town reacting to some crazy things that are happening. So I was, yes, I was very pleasantly surprised by how funny it was.
Now, I will not say it as a comedy, because that would be incorrect. And it should not be marketed as a comedy. But if someone saw Samca, it’s funnier than Samca.
That’s all I can say.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, it’s interesting, because I think that that things do need humor, right? You need the opposite side of what it is. A comedy needs a little bit of seriousness at the end.
Something that’s serious needs some comedy in it to both disarm and give people a break. So they’re definitely necessary parts.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah. And horror and comedy go very, very well together. Obviously, Eldritch is full of that.
And this one will have more comedy, which is nice. Samca, I think, would have like, historically, we’d be at three spots where people would laugh. And we were like, we got our one joke in before it gets so heavy that they can’t do this.
And this one’s gonna get heavy. But yeah, I’m looking forward to see how audiences will react and finding the humor in it with our actors.
[Phil Rickaby]
Sounds like a great show. I’m really looking forward to it. Kathleen, thank you so much for joining me.
I really appreciate you giving me some time.
[Kathleen Welch]
Yeah, this was lovely. Thanks so much for having me.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. Before I tell you who my guest is next week, let me tell you about my Patreon. Because I cannot do this show without the people who are backing me on Patreon.
It costs money to make a show like this. All of the things cost money, a website, a place to host all the audio files so they can be distributed to all of the podcast listening places, editing software, transcripts cost money, everything about creating a podcast costs money on some level. And I can’t do it without the people who are backing me on Patreon.
I’m eternally grateful to them. And if you would like to join them, if you would like to help me to make Stageworthy, you can do that by going to patreon.com/stageworthy and becoming a patron. Patrons get early access to episodes, we have some conversations about things that are happening in the theatre community and the theatre world at large.
And if you and the more people that join, the more I will be able to offer my patrons, I’ll be able to add new things for patrons if I get more of them. So if you want to help me to make the show, please go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Victoria Sullivan.
Victoria is a Hamilton based theatre creator and is part of my extra series of interviews where I interview people who are bringing shows to the Toronto Fringe. And the show that Victoria is bringing is called Minimum. It’s a fascinating show.
And so you should tune in next week to learn about Minimum at the Toronto Fringe. I’ll see you next week.
