Producing Is a Relationship Job with Reid Vanier
About This Episode:
In this episode of Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby sits down with theatre producer and arts leader Reid Vanier for a candid conversation about producing, leadership, and building sustainable theatre ecosystems. Reid reflects on his path into the industry, the realities of working behind the scenes, the theatre scene in Whitehorse, and the evolving responsibilities of producers in today’s cultural landscape.
This episode explores:
- Reid’s journey into theatre producing and arts leadership
- Balancing artistic ambition with organizational sustainability
- Leadership styles within theatre companies and cultural institutions
- Supporting artists while managing limited resources
- The evolving landscape of Canadian theatre production
- Collaboration, trust, and communication in creative teams
- And more!
Guest: 🎭 Reid Vanier
Reid (he/him) is a director and actor originally from Ontario but now based in Whitehorse, Yukon. He was worked on and off-stage at numerous theatres and arts organizations in Canada, including the Stratford Festival and Shaw Festival, and currently serves as the President of the Guild Hall in Whitehorse. Reid is also an award-winning podcaster and comedian.
Selected directing: The Weir, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Mustard (The Guild), Fiddler on the Roof (Yukon Theatre for Young People), Matt & Ben (Hot Cousin Productions), An Ideal Husband (KW Youth Theatre), The Real Inspector Hound, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet (Standard Deviation Theatre).
Selected acting: Two Gentlemen of Verona (Yukon Theatre for Young People), Good Night Desdemona Good Morning Juliet (The Guild), The Three Musketeers, Henry V (Stratford Festival), La Persistencia, The Dumb Waiter, On the Harmfulness of Tobacco (Standard Deviation Theatre).
Selected workshops: Klondike: The Musical (The Guild), Body 13 (The MT Space).
Training: University of Waterloo.
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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, actors, directors, playwrights, producers, stage managers, and more, some of whom you will have heard of and the others I really think you should get to know. Stageworthy is now in its 10th year. That means that I’ve been doing this podcast for quite some time.
And I want to encourage you to maybe go back in the archive. You could go back and listen to the very first episode with Rebecca Perry, as we talk about Rebecca’s first time at the Edinburgh Fringe, and how that came about and what it was like being there. You could also go back and check out my conversation with Paul Sun-Hyung Lee from Kim’s Convenience.
We recorded that when Paul was on tour across Canada doing Kim’s Convenience and just about to return to Toronto to continue playing Appa in that production. You could also go back and listen to one of my favourite episodes where I talk to Siobhan Richardson and Nicole Winchester about emotional bleed and theatre and how we might start to have conversations about that. And those are three episodes from the history of Stageworthy that I might recommend that you go back and check out.
I’m going to try to come up with some more in future episodes. But I think that this being the 10th year of Stageworthy is a great opportunity to talk about how you can help the podcast. I’ll talk more about the Patreon later on at the end of the program.
But there is a Patreon at patreon.com/stageworthy where you can help me make this show. Also, if you are using Spotify or Apple podcasts to listen to this program, if you were to leave a rating and review, that would really help. What a great time to help out to help get the word out about this show in its 10th year.
Just go in your favourite program, leave a review and a rating. And that actually does help the show. It helps more people to find this show.
And so if you could do that, that would be amazing. I would be so thankful whether you were to leave a review or to back this podcast on Patreon. Either one is super helpful.
Again, I’ll talk about the Patreon a little bit later on. If you’re watching on YouTube, do yourself a favour and like this episode, hit the subscribe button and hit that little bell icon so that whenever a new episode comes out, you will receive a notification that a new episode is available. And if you’re listening to the audio only version, open your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy and make sure that you are following this podcast.
Because if you are, whenever a new episode comes out, it will download directly to your device. And I would love for you to be able to get every episode without having to search for it. So both of those options are really great options for you to always be able to find the latest episode of Stageworthy.
My guest this week is Reid Vanier. Reid is a director and actor who’s originally from Ontario, but is now based in Whitehorse, Yukon. And I love this conversation because Whitehorse seems like such a almost magical place as far as like the people who are there and what they’re doing in their art scene and theatre specifically.
And I love learning about the theatre scene in new places. I hope you do too. So here is my conversation with Reid Vanier.
Reid Vanier, thank you so much for joining me. I am really interested to talk to you because you are a theatre creator, director, actor, comedian in a Whitehorse, Yukon. And I am unfamiliar with the scene in Whitehorse, and I do want to get to that.
But you are also, I believe, the president of the Guildhall Theatre, which is, I believe, a community theatre. It is, yeah. Tell me about the Guildhall.
[Reid Vanier]
Guildhall is a really amazing place. So it’s currently, we’re in the 46th season of the Guildhall up here. It’s in a building in a neighbourhood of Whitehorse called Porter Creek that I think is a converted barracks or something like that from when they were building the Alaska Highway.
And the Guild has been putting on pretty ambitiously scaled productions for almost half a century now. The space itself is a black box, kind of 80 seat theatre. But the Guild has a long history of also doing kind of big musical productions, of collaborating with other groups in Whitehorse.
And Whitehorse is actually a place that has lots of people to collaborate with. It’s sort of a really special ecosystem that way. But the Guild to me is at the heart of it because there are people who have been involved the entire time.
There’s people that come and go. Like any good community theatre, people find their time when their life opens up a little bit and they could be there for rehearsals and stuff. And then they take a step back when their family dynamic changes or work changes or things like that.
But there’s such an incredible community of people that contribute and people that come and support and watch and are a part of the Guild. It’s such a great little slice of the artistic history of Whitehorse.
[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned it’s a black box, about 80 seats, but there are some ambitious shows that the Guildhall has done. Spamalot, which you directed back in the spring. You’ve got Little Shop of Horrors coming up.
Are those shows done in that black box or is there another venue that you do the larger shows in?
[Reid Vanier]
So in the case of Spamalot, which I co-directed with the Guild artistic director, Brian Fidler, we did that at the Yukon Arts Centre. So that’s a big 400 some odd seat theatre that’s got all the rigging, it’s got the fly tower, it’s got lights, it’s got all the toys. And so in collaboration with the Arts Centre, we put Spamalot up on that stage.
But Little Shop of Horrors coming up in the spring, that’s going to be in our space, in the Guild. And actually, when I first moved up here, the first show I ever saw there was Evil Dead, the musical, and they had this giant swinging wall piece of a set. I was really mesmerized by how ingenious the set design was, how creative they were at using the small space, at managing all of these little technical nuances in such a small space.
It’s what made me fall in love with the Guild in the first place and start getting involved.
[Phil Rickaby]
Little Shop of Horrors is a show that belongs in a small space. It was originally produced in a very small space off-Broadway. And so it’s the kind of show I think, and especially because of the ending of that show, it really works in a small space, in a small ADC theatre.
I think so too.
[Reid Vanier]
And that theatre has got tricks. And over the years, we’ve been able to, through funding and other things, upgrade lights, upgrade sound. Our little theatre is capable of quite a bit, technically.
But yeah, I mean, a couple of years ago, there was a production of Young Frankenstein in there that, again, very kind of complicated with scene changes and having to use the space and some big kind of pieces, getting the monster up on the slab and all these kind of bits. And when you just walk in, it doesn’t look like it can accommodate those things, but I’m constantly in awe of the creative workarounds that our designers, that our carps people, that everyone is able to bring to these shows. And again, it’s like any community theatre, right?
You bring these people out and everyone’s kind of really in it for the love of the game, right? And I do think it brings out the best in everyone, having those technical challenges, those things to overcome.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. And it’s interesting because I think in Canada in particular, I think that in a lot of places, community theatre is frowned on by the more professional theatres. Whereas in some places like in the UK, community theatre is seen as an essential part of the theatre ecosystem.
But again, in a place like Whitehorse, I don’t know if Whitehorse could sustain a full-time equity theatre. And I think that even with that, the professional life of a performer or director would be very different in Whitehorse than somewhere else. What’s the importance of community theatre in Whitehorse?
[Reid Vanier]
Yeah, I mean, those are all good points. I think you’re right. I don’t know that in the traditional sense, I don’t know that a professional equity theatre could put a season up year after year and survive up here.
That being said, there are a number of professional theatre companies that are more based around the work, right? Some of them put on a festival, will bring other artists in to perform as part of a festival, will debut new work, will do new play development, all those sorts of things. But it’s not the same as putting up three to five shows or whatever.
And so professional theatre is alive and well in Whitehorse. There are artists who make a really solid go of it. But to your point, I think it does highlight the importance of a community theatre.
There’s a regularity to it. The thing that I’ve always liked about community theatres is the only substantive difference is the pay. Everyone is there for the same goal.
Community theatres always program a season, pick their shows, put the things we think of when we’re thinking of like really solid in-place professional theatres. Community theatres do all those things, but with the, you can romanticize it or whatever, but the no money and it’s people doing it on their off hours when they finish their job and they’re coming and volunteering their time. Or if they are getting a little honorarium or something, they’re essentially still volunteering quite a bit of time.
I think up here, that is the, it’s so important because that’s the gateway to being active in the artistic community. That regularity, having a season, knowing there are three shows and then a summertime festival, for example, like the Guild has, means people can think ahead. I know my fall is going to be busy, but I’m going to audition in the winter.
I’m going to come on out. It gives people a chance to sort of like prep their lives for coming out and making that volunteer time. Whereas there’s lots of people in town who absolutely could work professionally, but sometimes the turnaround of those projects is weird.
Does it line up with work? Is it a thing you could plan that far in advance? Some people make that happen, but not everyone can.
And so to me, what’s great about the Guild is you really get people of all levels. We have equity directors that come and have like, or ex-equity directors that have come and worked at the Guild. People that have incredible professional experience as stage managers, as actors, as set designers.
And then you also have people who have never done it before. You have people who come from other artistic disciplines and then want to try out props design or want to give a go at acting or directing. So our community theatre, to me, really feels bigger, I think, than maybe community theatre elsewhere, because it is sort of filling a few gaps that like we can’t sustain wholly on the professional level.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, there’s a few places that I’ve encountered where the community theatre scene is much bigger than, say, the professional theatre scene. In Hamilton, Ontario, for example, there’s one professional theatre and maybe four or five major community theatre companies. And some of those theatre companies are performing really ambitious work and stuff that you would see on a professional stage.
And I think that the fact that it is not considered as essential a part of the theatre ecosystem is a bit of something that I think that we’re missing.
[Reid Vanier]
Yeah, it’s funny, you know, I’ve never personally run up against someone where I’ve talked about community theatre and they’ve turned their nose up at me, in or out of the industry. But there is this almost innate, like, internalized, I don’t know, I don’t know the best way to put it. It does feel like there’s a kind of, like, lesserness that we’re supposed to anticipate from it.
But my experience up here is that people of all experience levels have a lot to give. And when you create an environment that encourages them to give it, you make really exciting art. The number one thing that makes me love the Guild and keeps me involved there is the idea of emerging talent.
We’ve got people that have talent out the wazoo, but maybe haven’t done too much. We’ve got people that have done a ton. And everyone is still finding room to grow.
That idea of development. What can we learn from a new type of play? When a new director comes into town and we are exposed to someone who has a different professional experience than what we’re used to.
And when technical changes happen and we’re capable of doing more with our sets and our shows. All of those things, there’s a continuous growth. And I think it’s so amazing in a place this remote to provide that kind of, like, artistic latitude to people.
Yeah, for sure.
[Phil Rickaby]
Speaking of remoteness of Whitehorse, I’m curious, what brings a guy from Ontario to Whitehorse UConn and gets him to stay?
[Reid Vanier]
Yeah. Well, I mean, my own short-lived theatre career was, as you know, a career in the arts or trying to make a career in the arts is challenging. It’s challenging just in terms of the competition and how many jobs are out there.
It’s challenging mentally to hear no, a lot in my case, not a particularly great actor. I heard no, a lot. And at a certain point I did kind of switch gears, you know, I, I kind of like my creature comfort.
So I wanted to be able to make rent. So I went back to school for marketing communications, but I kept working in and around theatre. I, I ended up shifting into like the box office and sort of audience development at Stratford and at the Shaw festival.
And I moved up here though, because while I was at the Shaw, my partner got a temporary gig up here. She was also looking to get out of professional theatre. She had an excellent career, but she’s a stage manager.
She was living out of a suitcase, you know, going gig to gig. And both of us were getting kind of tired of that. So she got a kind of eight month gig up here filling in for someone’s leave.
And I came to visit and it was like the coldest week of the year. It was like minus 40. It was so dark because it was Christmas time.
And I loved it. I just, I fell in love with it. Whitehorse is such a, a coral reef.
Like everyone up here has a hobby or a side gig or an extra business that they pursue out of passion. Every single person up here has got that thing and you can feel it. The place is full of energy and the people are full of that kind of energy.
And I just, I was so captivated by it. And when she moved back in the spring, that position that she had opened up permanently. And I very much said we should just go for it because I just, I really loved it up here.
So I, she had a job. I went on a flyer because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what I was doing, to be honest. And then being up here and starting to get involved, I, I have an unrelated, well, unrelated job in a not-for-profit, but now I’m one of the people up here that has the thing I do on my off hours that fuels me that I, to your point about maybe like the perception of community theatre.
I think for a long time, I didn’t feel comfortable saying I was a director because most of my work, whether or not I was being paid for it was happening at this kind of community level. But really it’s, I’ve done more consistent artistic work coming up here than I ever did when I was trying to make a career out of it. And the work’s not different.
You know, I don’t, I don’t go into rehearsal differently on a community theatre show than I would in a pro show, other than I’m less nervous. So, so to me, being up here and being in this community and being involved with the Guild has been such a blessing and it’s really helped me. I hope I’m not only speaking for myself, but I, I, I think I really had a mental struggle with not having the career I thought I would have.
And I think, I think that’s hard for artists when you have a sort of ambition or you have a vision of yourself and reality gets in the way. And it’s not just that, it wasn’t just a talent thing. I also, to be fair, I didn’t have the perseverance.
I’ve got friends that I came through school with that stuck it out and it was a hard slog, but they’re finally, they’re getting their dues. And I just, I didn’t have the perseverance for that. So I did, I did it myself, but like, I did have a hard time sitting with that and being up here and getting to be involved with the Guild is really like, I feel balanced.
It really makes me feel not disappointed.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, few people do have that career they thought they were going to have, right? Because often when we go, when we decide what our theatre, we’re young, I’m going to go into theatre.
And we have this strange idea of what it’s going to be based on things we’ve seen in movies and film and things like that. And it is hard. I mean, I, my, when I went to theatre school, I graduated, I think with like almost 15 people graduated in my class.
And I think four of them are still in the industry full time. Like, and a lot of people bail, a lot of people bail in the first five years because it is hard.
[Reid Vanier]
It’s so hard. And I’ll speak for myself. When I was young, I also didn’t take it very well.
Like, like there’s some hard lessons about like the drive you need to have and the not getting down on yourself when you get told no, and how much work you actually have to put in. Like, I think I, I coasted quite a bit in school and then I got out there and I was like, Oh no, like people like prepare for auditions. That was like, there were muscles I didn’t have.
And I can fully acknowledge all of that at this point in my life. But for a little period of time there, it was hard not to feel like I had disappointed myself. And so I, my love for community theatre is now like everlasting.
Like there is a place for that artistic expression is such an important channel for people to have. I mean, the whole world went through COVID. There were all these interruptions to having artistic channels, but I think you also saw people seeking them out when the world shut down, people went started a podcast where they started a book club or they did a whatever.
And yeah, sure. Most of it was on zoom for a bit there, but I think what you saw was that is so necessary having some kind of release. And so for me, for a while, I didn’t know what that was and now I’ve got it again and it’s amazing.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. There’s a, you’re, you’re talking about how the idea you have of what it’s going to be like when you leave school and it takes a long time to stop putting all of your hopes on each audition. Like going into each audition would be well, if I don’t get this one is the most important because you’re going to do so many auditions.
It’s hard to learn and get the muscle that it’s just like, this is just another audition. Totally.
[Reid Vanier]
And for me, part of it was, I also made the decision maybe to change course earlier because I didn’t want it to become a thing. I hate it. I didn’t want to start resenting theatre because I wasn’t a part of it.
And, and so I made the choice to, to switch gears. I, I feel so, so lucky. I spent two seasons on stage at Stratford and I say on stage because I was a jobber, but I got to be in two amazing productions and I got to work alongside people I admired all through theatre school and that I just, it was an absolute dream come true.
I, I could not be luckier. And then I switched gears. And when I worked at the Shaw, I worked in the office, but then I was, I got to still go and see the shows.
And I was still in the lunchroom with everybody. You’re still getting to nurture a part of your soul. And I feel like if I was working that job and simultaneously trying to advance whatever that other part of the career was, it would just taint all of it, at least for me.
And again, I, I don’t think I had the right attitude trying to make that career initially. And so it was important to me that I keep loving it because I really do love theatre.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, none of us do this as, especially in like community theatre when you’re not being paid, nobody does that for any reason other than the love of it. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaking of that, I’m curious about, you sort of talked a bit about it, but what is, what does the theatre scene and the theatre ecosystem look like in Whitehorse?
[Reid Vanier]
Yeah, it’s, I mean, the artistic ecosystem of Whitehorse is a lot more robust than people might think. We’re a city of about 30 ish thousand people, very fast growing, but about 30,000 people. And there are half a dozen kind of professional to semi-professional performance companies.
There are a ton of bands, choirs, there’s multiple art galleries. There are some very renowned painters, poets, storytellers, stand-up comedians. The art scene is so vibrant and it all comes back to that idea of everyone pursues a passion up here, you know, and, and it’s, it’s really inspiring.
And sometimes the people’s passion isn’t even what we call like just a, it’s not like a performance art. Sometimes it starts with someone, there’s an example I always throw, there was someone in town who just liked making kettle corn and they’d make a bit and they’d sell it at the craft fair and people loved it. And then they’d have to make more and then they’d have to take time off work to make more.
And then they had, and now they just have, that’s their business. They completely went from government gig to this thing that they loved doing. And, and there are so many stories like that in Whitehorse and that’s true of the theatre scene.
So even just personally, I’ve been involved in some capacity with the now renamed Pivot Theatre, with the Guild Hall and with the Yukon Theatre for Young People. I also worked at the Yukon Arts Center, the presenting house for a number of years. There’s, there’s an indigenous company called Wondak Theatre that does really great work up here.
There’s Ramshackle Theatre, which does some really kind of innovative, fun work that sort of blends kind of theatre and performance art. They host a festival called Theatre in the Bush every year. There’s Larrikin Entertainment, which is a professional company that puts on shows, you know, and we’ll pay actors for the couple of weeks, you know, like professional theatre exists.
There are so many people doing it and working on it. There’s also lots of community theatre. There’s lots of little upstart things where people decide they really love a script and they just want to put that script on.
They just find a way to do it. There’s another collective that’s Sigil Theatre that’s run like scene study competitions the last couple of years. Like even just there, I’ve named six to eight distinct theatre organizations at varying levels of professional to community, and that’s just theatre.
There’s dance, there’s music, there’s visual art, there’s all the disciplines of visual art from sculpture to painting to photography. It’s, I, Whitehorse is, it’s such a coral reef. It’s crazy.
The saturation of artistic talent here.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s pretty wild. That’s a lot for a city of 30,000. That’s pretty impressive.
[Reid Vanier]
Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s wild, but this is what I’m talking about too. I also think that the Guild gets to thrive because of an ecosystem like this as a community theatre that gets to draw on in a community like that, not just as collaborators, but as audience, as supporters.
What a, what a gift, right? So fortunate that. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You mentioned the, the, the Ugandan theatre for young people, and I was curious about the importance that as you see it of bringing young people to the theatre, getting them working, like how, what’s the impact of that on the kids and ends of the community?
[Reid Vanier]
I think it’s enormous. You know, I mean, I, I worked on, on one show with that company. We did, I directed Fiddler on the Roof and anyone that signs up is in the show.
You know, the thing, number one for that big main stage show, like we had, I can’t remember the exact number, like 46 kids or something like that in that show, but the it’s, this is, I’m not saying anything new here, but what it’s, what you see from their confidence and their social skills, what they gain from a technical perspective, working with lav mics and working with like some really cool stuff for kids to, to get to do, to have these incredible costumes made by, by just really, really talented artists to get to work with a great choreographer, to get to try things. And I mean, a musical is tough because there are so many very specific things that have to get done.
And that really eats up rehearsal time. It doesn’t leave a lot, especially for you theatre, you’re only going like once or once and a half a week or whatever for an extended amount of time. It doesn’t leave you a ton of like play around acting time, but I, I really try to, if the kids throw something out there and it doesn’t break the show, keep it in like that.
It’s you, cause you see them open up. They go, what if I did this? And you go, that doesn’t break the show.
Do it like either. I love that. I mean, I, I’ve worked with kids a lot in the past at like art kind of theatre, summer camps and things like that.
And I, they can do so much more than I think people think like community theatre. I think they get looked down on a little bit. I don’t treat them particularly differently.
I watch my language. That’s about it. I think they really can rise to, I can, you can set the bar pretty high with kids.
And, and yeah, I just, I think it’s so important. There’s a great program up here too, for high schoolers called the MAD programs, music, art, and drama. That a sort of magnet program that a lot of kids go into that gives them exposure to sort of musical theatre and, and those sorts of things.
And it’s, yeah, you see the spark. It’s awesome.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I would love to talk to you about just a little bit away from theatre and talk about your podcasts as a one podcaster to another. What drew you to podcasting?
And I mean, you’re, you’re, there’s a, these are podcasts with like over 200 episodes. You have two, you have a ghost facers and you wanted this, which does, which has 11 episodes so far, but like two over 200 episodes for ghost facers. What brought you to podcasting?
[Reid Vanier]
I think it was in my kind of call it my slump era or whatever, but I was looking for a creative outlet. And for a while I was, I was kind of finding my own channel as a kind of blogger and writing for other kinds of websites about comic books. And I’m a big comic book nerd.
And I, so the first podcast that I started was called the Dr. DC podcast that I started with friend and it was basically a chance for me to geek out. People would send in questions about like, how come Batman and I would give the answer. And we did 500 episodes of that.
And ghost facers came out of that. It’s me in the same podcast partner on all of these shows. My, my friend Richard, that one, we’re going through every episode of supernatural.
And it’s just, it’s, it started from a place of, I need a creative outlet. And this is a What podcasting has become now for me is fully creative expression. Like our new show, you wanted this, the topic changes week to week, people vote and we just make an episode about something.
But that’s because we just want to perform for each other. Sometimes that’s not funny. It’s just like learning.
Sometimes it’s improv. Sometimes it’s, I feel like there are so many performance muscles that I actually gained through podcasting. That wasn’t necessarily the goal when I started, but podcasting got me into standup comedy and standup comedy got me back to theatre and all of it back to live performance.
We’ve done live podcasting shows at like fan Expo and stuff like that. And those things, there are different art forms, but they all nurture the same little gremlin inside me. And so, yeah, to me now, that’s just part of, that’s part of my creative release now is, is podcasting as a form, if I can call it that.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. It is absolutely a form. And it is, like you said, there’s, there are certain aspects of it that are like performing.
You just don’t, unless you’re doing a live show, you don’t get the immediate feedback that you might from a theatrical.
[Reid Vanier]
And we joke, sometimes it feels like, like other people take their podcast a lot more seriously than we do, which is probably true. We’re turn on the mics and we hang out for a bit and then we put it out and we would just be having these silly conversations and telling stupid jokes anyway. But I really, I’m so surprised.
And I, I really underestimated what it did to the kind of atrophying theatre muscles I had. It really energized me when I had no energy for it creatively. And standup comedy was a step from that as well.
And Whitehorse is such a like safe place to try standup. I wouldn’t have tried it anywhere else that people really want that joke to land up here. Like no one is coming with the tomatoes pre-rotten, like it’s like there.
So all of those things really jump-started me getting the confidence to sort of jump back in and get back involved with things that were longer and more collaborative, that required more people that needed more of my time. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think, I mean, I’m interested in the comic book aspect and also the fact that there’s this supernatural rewatch, because I think that theatre in general could do with a little bit more pulp, a little bit more popcorn.
[Reid Vanier]
Right.
[Phil Rickaby]
We are, we are so serious, especially in, in lower, further South. It’s very serious, the business of theatre and it’s got to be important and capital I important. And I, there are some theatre companies that have really delved into genre, but they are few and far between.
But I think that audiences look for just like they want to go see a serious film. They also want a little bit of popcorn. They want something a little lighter and pop culture sort of provides an outlet and a view on that.
I think. Totally.
[Reid Vanier]
And I mean, as I’ve gotten older and I hope wiser, my view on it too, is that it is, it’s not a mutually exclusive idea. Both comic books and supernatural for those who haven’t seen the show are really great examples of you could do whatever you want with it. Pretty much at any time, as long as it’s earnest and justified and supported like any arts is or any narrative is you can, you can have sixties Batman and you can have bail Batman and you could have, you can have the whole spectrum and they don’t have to exist separate from each other.
You don’t have to put serious Batman over here for the grownups and silly Batman over here. Anyone that spent three minutes with a comic book can tell you that it’ll do it page to page and supernatural is the same way. There are some really like that show gets so winky and so meta in its later seasons and becomes a real kind of in-joke that it can do that flip on a dime.
And so for me in theatre, I, a thing that I say when I’m directing people is that I can always make, we can always make it smaller. Again, it’s really hard to make it big. I was like, go big.
I’ll tell you if it’s too much. And the other piece of that is that for actors, everyone has a different process and everyone needs to feel like they own a choice in a different way. And that’s really important for an actor to feel like a thing is natural or supported or justified.
But for me as a director, the only thing I care about is, does it read from the audience? You like do whatever you have to do and I will help you find the logic. I’ll do whatever I have to do to help you own a thing, but you could do big, dare I say, cartoony things in a very serious or very realistic or very naturalistic piece.
And they still ring true and they work because of that kind of lizard brain thing of needing something pulpy or just to me, it all comes down to like the whiplash of tension, right? We got to build tension. We got to break it.
And real life is also cartoony sometimes. So I don’t subscribe to the idea of serious and important and pulpy and cartoony are two separate things. They’re shades.
And if you’re being really clever and if you’re using really good material, all the shades are in there. You get to decide which bits you pull out and which bits you focus on. And there are good choices and bad choices in there.
Sometimes it’s like, that wasn’t the time to be pulpy and silly, but it’s never, this is not a silly play. There’s always room for something. So those things that I love have really brought that out in me that I just have to unabashedly love.
Batman could be so serious. And then I could read a comic where he falls from the moon to the earth, not in a spaceship and survives. You go, great, Batman, love that.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, it comes down to like, sure, there’s serious theatre, but Shakespeare had his slapstick in the serious plays. If it’s all drama, if it’s all serious, the audience gets exhausted.
[Reid Vanier]
I also, this is my slightly hot theatre take, is that I don’t, and it may be slightly surprising for someone like me, who I really love like 19th century, like Chekhov and that kind of stuff. I don’t really believe that anyone really wants to see naturalism on stage. I think that’s a lie.
But I think it’s an interesting artistic exercise, but I think it’s, it’s not interesting theatre. What people want to see is theatre. You know, there’s, I, I don’t just want to see a wall lifted off a room and peer in.
If I watched real life for an hour, I’d want my money back. That’s awful. What I want is real life goosed because I’m only here for an hour.
So give me the juicy bits. And we’re all doing it. Anyone that says that they’ve just written a slice of life is lying because they have to condense all of it into the timeframe of theatre.
So for me, that also applies to performance. It applies to blocking. It applies to lighting.
I just directed a production of the weird by Connor McPherson up here. And that is a show that just takes place in an Irish pub over 90 minutes. And it’s one act and it’s just people telling stories.
Theoretically you could just turn the lights on and leave them, but that’s boring. So I, you have to be able to be expressive. It’s an art form and, and to be expressive, you need to show shades.
So it can’t all be real and can’t all be serious and it can’t all be silly. Everything has to be in there and get its moment. It’s symphonic.
You have to find where those peaks and valleys are, but it’s an absolute lie. If someone says that a comedy is just funny, nonstop, if something’s funny, nonstop, it’s not very like, it’s probably not because you need pathos. We need that.
Like think of the best comedies, the ones where you actually care about the characters. Right. And it’s the same in reverse.
So, so to me, all of those things are so necessary. So any theatre that can be slightly less self-important. And I do think Shakespeare is actually pretty good for it because sometimes it’s just really hard to be self-important in some of the like ludicrous scenarios that are in Shakespeare.
You have to lean in. It’s of such value to just take things like 8% less seriously.
[Phil Rickaby]
The language of Shakespeare is so heightened that you can’t really just do it in a realistic manner anyway, because how did it even work when you’re speaking in verse or just Elizabethan language doesn’t work that way.
[Reid Vanier]
Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I’ll give an example from The Weir.
There’s a part in the show where it’s four guys that are always in this bar drinking, and then one new woman comes to town. And there’s one part where she offers to buy a drink for one of them. And the lines in the script to someone goes, Oh, you’re the guest.
The direction I gave was all four of you at the exact same time, have to hold your hands up straight out like the Temptations and go like, no, like not even saying it out loud, but it’s a move. I even called it like the Temptations. And I could see the actors going, this is a pretty realistic play.
This feels silly. And I just like, there’s a trust to it. I go like, I promise I’m not going to make you look dumb on stage, but just roll with me on this.
And it works because what it comes down to is it heightens the thing that’s in the script, which is the Irish like social contract, you know, about who buys drinks for whom and what does it mean to be a guest? And how are these men in the nineties treating the nice lady that’s come into their pub and all those things. So objectively, could you say that was a silly move?
That’s silly blocking for me to put in this serious play. And you could say yes, but does it work? Does it fit within the play?
Can it actually like provide a moment of release from some of the tension? Can it make us care about the characters more? Cause it shows a side of them where they are expressing some care for this new character.
Yes. And so I’ll always veer to the side of too big to quote silly, because I think it’s more interesting. There’s more flavor.
Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It is. It’s one of those things you were mentioning about comedy and comedy can’t just be like jokes all the way through.
There has to be a payoff, right? You can have jokes up to a point. And I always I’m thinking of the play men in white, which I saw a number of years ago, which is funny.
It’s a funny play. And then at the very end, it is not. It’s like gut punch tragedy right at the end.
And it that fact makes all of the comedy mean more because this thing happened at the end, like giving an audience a balance, like a payoff, a balance, whatever it is. We need the serious and the calm and the comedic in order to not be exhausted by a play to be able to feel connected with the characters. Do you know who’s terrific at that?
Is Kat Sandler?
[Reid Vanier]
One hundred percent. Sandler understands that if we’re just contemporary Canadian theatre, is there someone that understands that better than Kat Sandler? I don’t know.
They’re very few.
[Phil Rickaby]
And I mean, I know that you did you direct Mustard or you were.
[Reid Vanier]
I did. Yeah, I directed Mustard, which is such a fantastic show. Yeah.
Incredible script.
[Phil Rickaby]
Kat has a great way of bringing in like just this weird factor to a play and like a surprising thing. But to keep it grounded, I saw her play Bang a number of years ago, which I thought was a really important play. It dealt with really important themes and all of that.
But it was funny and earned the seriousness and it earned the comedy. Again, Kat Sandler is a great example of that. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. Now, I know that you’ve been you’re passionate about those classics, the Ibsen, the Chekhov, the Shakespeare. How do you get the opportunity to do those often in White Horse?
Or is that something that you don’t get to do like at the Guildhall?
[Reid Vanier]
Shows like that have been done at the Guildhall. And I should mention that like the next show coming up in our season, I’m not involved in it, but is Yvette Nolan has written and wrote an adaptation of The Birds, an adaptation of Aristophanes. Classics have been done up here.
I personally haven’t gotten to do a ton of them yet. And I sort of I’m waiting. I’m picking my moment.
I don’t want to scare people because I’m one of those maniacs. That’s like everything Chekhov wrote is a comedy. It doesn’t matter who dies at the end.
I don’t want to totally put people off, but it’s in there. I’m waiting for it. I’ve got my I have my sort of bucket list things I would like to I would like to do.
There is a little bit of a growing kind of Shakespeare thing happening up here that’s sort of just burgeoning, but I think there is market for it. I could see it growing and taking off. But yeah, I’ve I’ve got like I’ve got some things in my back pocket that I know I want to get to at some point.
[Phil Rickaby]
If you had to choose one, if there was like one that you were like, all right, I get to do one. This is the one it would be. Is there one in your back pocket that you would just be like, this is the one?
[Reid Vanier]
I think I think my big one would be Uncle Vanya. I’ve always really loved that one. I mean, it’s there’s something.
It’s so my kind of I call it sense of humor, the kind of like we laugh so we don’t cry is such my vibe, which is also partly why I like mustard. Cat Sandler’s mustard, I think, sits in that zone, which is like we’ll laugh even though there’s a gruesome tooth extraction happening right now. And and so that’s my I think Vanya is one.
There’s something I love about that kind of like the impotence of his potential and all that. I mean, maybe it’s because I feel like I personally related to it. You know, I did talk a bunch about it, feeling disappointed in myself.
That might be part of it. But I just think it’s I think it’s such a funny play. It’s so emotional.
It does all those things that we’re talking about. It has all the shades. There’s so many delicious bits you could pull out of it and have fun with.
And that’s the real joy for me. So that would be one.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Just as we’re sort of heading to the end of our time, I’m curious if there’s something coming up for you that you’re particularly excited about.
[Reid Vanier]
I think the thing that I’m excited about wearing my president of the Guildhall hat is, I mean, both The Birds and Little Shop of Horrors, I think, in different ways, show the ambition of this, quote, little community theatre. The Birds is a co-production with Gwandak Theatre, and it’s part of our ongoing effort to engage with First Nations artists and promote, you know, new development, new play development, new work from Indigenous artists. And if that Nolan is such like a force and it’s such a great script, it reaches all the way back to antiquity, you know, to be like a classic text reimagined.
Yeah, that’s ambitious in its own way. And then Little Shop of Horrors, just technically speaking, you know, all the things that you have to pull off in our little space. And I’m so thrilled at the talent that we have up here.
Like we have like truly great like props builders and puppeteers, like we have all the pieces for it. So I am so excited for people to come out and be involved and to audition and to come and see these things because they really do, I think, exemplify what’s so special about our community theatre. It’s not just, and no community theatre really is, but it’s not just a club and it’s not casual.
Like people are maybe volunteering, maybe they’re giving up some time, maybe, but everyone is putting things in like it’s their work. It is their passion. Again, there’s really no difference to me between this and working professionally somewhere else.
And that’s the level of commitment that that community and that our little theatre has brought out in people, which is that thing that says something about the tone of it too, you know, we’re here to nourish that impulse in people to be collaborative, to be supportive. It’s not judgy. It’s not what cred can you bring?
It’s not self-serious. It’s not whatever those gates are don’t exist there. And I think that’s so special.
So yeah, I mean, for this season to have been the we’re and the birds and the little shop of horrors, it does kind of show, I think the breadth and the scope and the ambition of our community theatre, which is awesome.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Now in closing, I have, my question is this, if somebody was thinking that they wanted to go to white horse and just as a visit or, or, they wanted to catch and get the vibe, what would be the best time for somebody to go to white horse to get the vibe of what the scene is there?
[Reid Vanier]
I’m going to, I’m going to ride the fence. I’m going to give you two answers. So the winter is tough.
The dark is tough. Like I’ve lived here for about a decade and I still find the dark tough, but the winter is like packed with concerts and festivals and theatre. It’s like everything is happening and it’s happening because we’ve got to get through the winter, you know, like that it’s not by accident.
In the summertime, people go off, they do their trips, they go camping, they go overland hiking, whatever they’re doing. But the flip side is that in the summer, you got all that sunlight and the energy from that is amazing, you know, and there are some really fun, like cool outdoor things to do and it doesn’t have to be athletic. There’s awesome kind of arts stuff to take in and enjoy.
There are shows, there are concerts, there’s music festivals. And then of course there’s all of the like bounty of like nature, hiking, biking, canoeing, paddling, skiing, whatever time of year there’s something for you there. So if you want to be busy with events and activities, I’d say come in the winter.
But if you want to just soak it all in, maybe on a slightly kind of calmer vibe and just take in like that insane midnight sun, then you got to come in the summer.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thanks. That’s a complete picture. Thank you so much.
Reid, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I will get to next week’s guest in just one second. But first, I do want to talk a little bit more in depth about my Patreon because I can’t make this show without the people who’ve chosen to back us up.
The people who’ve chosen to back it on Patreon. You get to listen to this podcast for free. There are no, there’s no cost to that.
There’s no advertising even. But it does still cost money to make a show like this. There are costs in terms of like hosting the website, hosting the audio files, distribution, editing software, and also all of the image editing to help me to create promotional material for this podcast.
And so in the history of this show, except for when I restarted in March, I’ve been paying out of pocket entirely for this podcast. And that just covers the cost. I’m really grateful for the people who have chosen to back this podcast and people who are doing so I’m so grateful for their support for your support if you’re one of those backers, but I’m still only just covering the costs and I’m not even being paid for my time.
It takes several hours a week to put this show together from booking the interviews and performing interviews and then editing and all of the stuff that goes into getting a podcast ready. Now, how can you help? You can go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a backer backers get early access to episodes, we’ll have conversations about the theatre scene in Canada and theatre in general and topics that we might want to cover. And the more backers we get, the more we’re able to do. So if you enjoy this podcast, if you want to help me to make it go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Gabrielle who is the artistic director of Vancouver’s push festival.
And this is a festival that I didn’t know much about. And I was really happy to learn about it and glad to hear more about the work that they do and Gabrielle’s passion for the work. So tune in next week for my conversation with Gabrielle Martin.
