I'm Phil Ricoby, and I've been a writer and performer for almost 30 years. But I've realized that I don't really know as much as I should about the theater scene outside of my particular Toronto bubble. Now I'm on a quest to learn as much as I can about the theater scene across Canada. So join me as I talk with mainstream theater creators you may have heard them, and indie artists. You really should know, as we find out, just what it takes to be stageworthy. If you value the work that I do on stageworthy, please consider leaving a donation either as a one time thing or on a recurring monthly basis. stageworthy is created entirely by me, and I give it to you free of charge with no advertising or other sponsored messages. Your continuing support helps me to cover the cost of producing and distributing the show. Just four people donating $5 a month would help me cover the cost of podcast hosting alone. Help me continue to bring you this podcast. You can find a link to donate in the show Notes, which you can find in your podcast app or the website at stageworthy CA. Now on to the show. Claren Gross is a Toronto based writer, theater and visual artist, and artistic director of Pencil Kit Productions. She's also the creator and performer of I Love the Smell of Gasoline, which runs from March 8 to 19th at Toronto's Aki Studio. In this conversation, we talk about writing a show during the early days of the Pandemic, her love of using Overhead projectors in her shows, and much more. Here's our conversation. Clarence, thank you so much for joining me. Turns out I've been following Pencil Kit Productions for a very long time. And so on Instagram, I've been following probably a couple of years now, so I've seen a lot of the stuff that you post and I've seen a lot of Overhead projectors in the Pencil Kit production things, and I want to get to the Overhead projector. But first off, could you tell me about the show that you are currently working on? I love the smell of gasoline.
I would love to. So I Love This Amount of Gasoline is a play that I wrote and been performing in. It's an autobiographical solo show. I use the word solo loosely here because there's actually three other people on stage with me doing these overhead projections, but I'm the one who speaks. And it is basically a play in which I'm trying to reconcile my own personal roots to the energy industry, to oil and gas specifically. I grew up in Calgary, Alberta. My dad worked in oil and gas, and how I like balance knowing that with the impending environmental apocalypse that is upon us, and also how I balance in my life. I know oil and gas workers and I know Albertans and I know conservatives. And then most of my life in Toronto is kind of like a liberal art bubble of sorts and how I navigate conversations on kind of both ends of that spectrum and yeah, how I kind of try and balance these really contradicting truths sometimes. That's kind of what the play is about.
Now, as somebody who grew up with family in the oil industry, in the gas industry, all that sort of thing, what's interesting is that a number of years ago my brother started going out to Alberta to work in, guess what oil. And so I feel somewhat in a similar situation. The way that my brother and I have learned to deal with it is we don't talk about that because for him it's just a paycheck, doesn't matter. And for me it's like it's a little bit more than that. So do you find something similar when you're talking with people back home? Are these conversations that actually happen or is the distance too great?
Well, I got to be honest, most of the conversations happen with my parents. So there is a different level. Well, it's just kind of the same proximity you have. It's a familial one, right? And I have always felt perhaps because I grew up with that truth and I grew up in a culture like a Calgary where oil and gas is not a big demon thing, it's really something that one in five people are working in. You know what I mean? That's a made up statistic. I don't actually know statistics. I just want to be clear.
It's close, I'm sure. It's close.
I'm sure. But a large part of the workforce is working in that sector, right? It's not in a primary industry than in a secondary or tertiary industry, right? So for me it is just like part of the fabric of life. And I don't see working in the producing end of oil and gas as any different than living in the consumption end of oil and gas, which we all live in, right? We all are heating our homes and driving cars and consuming those resources. And to me that is on the same level ethically as working in the oil and gas. That's a broad brush stroke. Obviously there are nuances to that opinion as well. But especially if we're not talking about the people who are making millions of dollars a year off of destroying and coming up with conspiracies to make sure you invest, you know what I mean? Obviously, of course gradients here than people who work on the rig, you know what I mean?
Of course. I mean it's similar to like you got the plastic industry which has successfully convinced us all that it's our responsibility to reduce our plastic consumption. Also. I mean, you could go into as far as the ethics of my iPhone, all of that sort of stuff. Exactly.
I'm saturated with that.
Exactly. I think that you have the people who produce it and it makes them a living and then the rest of us just sort of mindlessly consume it. And it's so uncomfortable to think about. But you had to think about it because of the familial connection. What made you want to write about that?
So I actually started writing the play in the fall of 2019, which was federal election season. And it's when wegsit started becoming a thing. And Alberto and Saskatchewan exclusively voted conservative across the board. And people in my circles really kind of think of people who vote as conservative as being just completely unrelatable. It's unethical. It's all these bad things that they cannot even begin to wrap their head around. And I'm like, okay, but there is a whole province of people voting this way. Do you know what I mean? And it can't be that everyone in that province is evil.
No.
So I felt this tension between the narratives that I was hearing coming out of Alberta and the narrative that I was hearing from my friends and just, like, the inability for those narratives to meet. They didn't even have an opportunity to meet, right? Or to have conversations across that. So I wanted to create a piece of art that did bridge these things. Right. I see art that just argues for environmental progress, and we see a lot of ecoactivism art. And then I see you don't see art about conservative oil and gas views, but not usually. Not usually. Maybe you'll see a Calgary Herald article, but you don't see those perspectives at the same time. And so I was like, how can I layer these and try and sandwich them into a lens to understand Canada and what is happening? How can I try and understand it all, if that makes sense. I don't know if that makes sense.
No, absolutely. In terms of trying to put these things together, how do you stitch these things so that they can be coherent? How do you distill two things that seem so distant into a show?
Well, one of the things I kind of started right from the top was embracing a kind of collage structure, which is just to say, to put the two contradicting truths right next to each other. So to spoil one scene in the play, I talk about how I used to work in retail, and when you're working in the fitting rooms, it's actually often like a very intimate environment. And you're working with I would be working with women who are buying a dress for a significant occasion or are in the middle of a really bad situation in their life, and they're trying to get a dress to feel better about themselves, those kind of things. And so talking about the emotional pull of that moment and what it means to buy a new dress, and then immediately following that up with just the fact that that dress is made from spandex and polyester, which is made from petroleum and that that dress is made overseas in bad conditions for the workers and that it's coming wrapped in plastic and that that dress is going to end up in a landfill. Like, these are just both true at the same time. So a lot of the play is just collaging together these facts so we can hold them as close together as we can at the same time. And I think that having to sit with that discomfort about our own ethical choices opens you up to sitting with the discomfort of other peoples as well. Just so that my hope is that we can start having conversations that are a little bit more compassionate and empathetic and understanding that other people are yes, also making questionable ethical decisions, but from the same place that we are all are that we're trying to do our best and that the world is making that really difficult and that we have to be on the same team as we're, like, approaching, fixing the world.
Yeah, absolutely. The whole sitting in two different things is kind of interesting to me. I wrote a solo play that I've been performing for a number of years called The Commandment, a number of years ago. And one of the things that I enjoyed about that show is when I would pitch it to people, it didn't matter if they were atheists or Christians, they both thought that they were going to get the experience that they thought they were going to get. Like the Christians were like, oh, it's so great. The atheist is going to learn to come to God. And the atheists were all like, oh, they're going to like, stick it to God. Like, it was like this really interesting thing where they both got it and interestingly, my director was an atheist, but he recently performed it in Edmonton. And so we've both come at it different from different ways to create this same show. And the show doesn't change, it's just that your perspective changes in terms of your audience. Is this a show that you could perform in Calgary and in Toronto and have people have their own experience with it or is this a show that is kind of just for Toronto kind of thing?
That's a great question. I am actually trying to take it to Calgary. So grand scheme. Yes. I think it's a show that could be performed in both and that I've tried to write about both cities in a way that will make them both feel honored. It would have to be tailored a little bit, though, because it really is specifically like, you Toronto audience don't know this about Alberta, which would have to be tailored just a little bit, right? But not a lot of adjustments. It would just have to be like, you Albertans, do know this about Alberta. Toronto's don't know about this about us. You know what I mean? But I do try to always speak to the audience as an us and I think that, like, when I'm talking to my Toronto audience. It's an us. US, Toronto people.
Yeah.
When I'm in Calgary, it would be talking, this isn't us, you and me, Calgary people.
You mentioned starting to write it in 2019. I'm always fascinated about the writing process and how long it takes to write something. The commandment took me eight years. I know, but the solo gets easier. It's just like the first time you read is really, really intimidating and pandemic.
You know what I mean?
You did, you did. You did. You did have that. But I'm just gonna okay, so during the pandemic, I think the first year of the pandemic, I had no creative juices whatsoever. Like, for most of 2020, I was just like, I'm just doom scrolling, just whatever. This is all I have in me right now. No creativity. Did you find that in those first days of the pandemic, in the first months that you were able to be creative? Or was it were you in a similar situation?
I will give the context of I was really blessed in the pandemic with I didn't end up in any kind of financial precarity. Like, my job transitioned onto my work as a tutor, and that transitioned online. If anything, I could take on more students. Like I didn't. Even better. And my roommate worked from home. So a lot of the things that made life really hard for people during the pandemic, I did not have. And so for me, I ended up with a lot more time, and my biggest obstacle in life was boredom. So I would say I actually did get a creative burst. I did a lot of art, visual art. I did a lot of creative writing, like poetry. I actually just released an illustrated chapbook of poetry with Gap Riot Press in the summer. Nice from all that. And also part of this creative moment in my life with writing this play. So, yes, I would say it wouldn't burst, though. Like, I would have three nights where you're staying up until 03:00 a.m. Writing and then not touch it for months and then write three nights where.
You'Re like, yeah, absolutely. Now, that process of writing this play, the first draft is always the first draft. And then if you look back between the version that you're rehearsing now and about to perform and you compare it with the early days, do they look like the same show, or is there, like, vast differences? How has the play changed?
That's a good question. And it's funny because I was truly yesterday looking at the first draft for the first time in years, and there are definitely still a lot of sections in it that made it into the play. I wouldn't say it's a completely different beast, but it was longer. So, for example, the play right now is like it's 28 pages, like, on a normal printer page. Plus it has, like, a column of stage direction so it's quite a short play. It's like 65 minutes. The original draft is 50 pages with no column for stage direction. It was much longer, much more roundbilly. And I know that the way I just approached it is I would just kind of journal about all these different things and just figure out the idea is I'll figure out later how and if any of these things fit together. For now, I'm just going to write out these chunks, like, create generate some material that I can then collage together with kind of the strategy. So I would say it was a much more verbose version of what I am now working with.
The way that you described that, I'm curious about your theater school experience. If you did go to theater school, where did you go?
I went to Tmu.
Okay. And at any time in that time, did you do what's called a vocal mask? Or does that phrase mean anything to you?
I don't think that means anything to me. I wasn't forgetting all my schooling.
But yet I will say that if you have done a vocal mask, you would not ever forget having done a vocal mask, because vocal mask the way that we did it. I went to George Brown Theater School and we would do one each year. And you're collaging from found material. So you're like finding material and you're trying to create a cohesive entertainment out of it. But that knowledge has sort of, like, carried over to or that mobility has carried over to the way that I now create solo shows in terms of, like, I write and I write and I write, and then I see what comes out of that writing and what can I use, and that sort of thing. So just curious if that sort of came out of a theater school thing or did you find that on your own?
For me, it came out of actually devised cedar. I'm thinking of I directed in Dramaturged, a play in 2016, Persephone. So we adapted as an ensemble the story of Persephone for the stage. And how I did that is I would give the cast prompts that I was curious about, and they would respond. And we just kept doing that until we had generated a big mass of material. And then I kind of spliced things together and checked in with them and we put it together. And then I was kind of like, okay, I could do that on my own. Like, I could give myself prompts about things. I'm kind of curious about it and see what comes out. It's also the way that I co wrote a play called Shadow Girls with Kesha Palm, and we also did the same thing as, like, we have to come up with five offers. Here are some prompts. Basically, it's forcing yourself to generate something because it's two different skills, generating and then piecing together. Right. And I think if you treat them separately. They both feel easy. When you try and, like, do it at the same time, you're like, I have to create a play that feels difficult.
Yeah. No, I sort of stumbled on taking the vocal mask exercise into creating a show because the idea of creating a solo show is too big. Too big. So big, especially your first one. But just generally it's like, this is going to be me doing this thing, and it's a bit too much. But the idea of just, like, writing a bunch of ideas and seeing where they go and then finding out of their cohesive things and putting it together later, that is doable.
Absolutely. Breaking it into steps.
Yeah, absolutely. So now I want to know about the overhead projector. Because I grew up in a time because I'm an old man, I grew up in a time when the overhead projector was like every class had one. Yeah, the big light bulb, the thing and the acetate. And the teacher would like, right on it and stuff like that. It was like, just like, that's how we did it. Sometimes they would do they'd come in and they've had everything prepared, and it would just be like, slap the acetate on the thing. And then we would all take frantic notes, that sort of thing. I don't even know if they use those anymore in school.
I highly doubt it.
What was your experience of the overhead projector? And how did you decide that you were going to use that in theatrical productions?
I have two answers for this. The smart answer is that I liked the way that overhead projector art as a medium was a bit of a reduce, reuse, recycle thing. It was reducing an entire lighting grid to one simple machine. It's repurposing something that has been antiquated. A lot of the projections are created with found objects. So there's like a bit of recycling in the things you use to create the projections. So thematically, that all fits. Plus, I like the idea that it was this a learning tool. Right. And the play is in some ways kind of like I don't want to say lecture, because that sounds boring, but there is definitely an element of, like, sharing research to the play. So thematically, it really seemed to fit. That's a good answer. Perhaps the real answer is just that I love overhead projection art as a medium. And I wanted to do that. So I was like, if my play I got to do what I want, I want to use overhead projector.
That kind of answer is absolutely my favorite answer to any question. Years ago, I was at many, many years ago at Nua Blanche, and I came across this installation where there was this structure and they had balloons and they had lights, and it was fascinating. And I went inside and it was great. And I said to the guy, the artist was there I said, Where did you come up with this? And he said, I just wanted to put a balloon on a light. I thought it would be cool. And I was like, that is 100% the best answer that I've heard.
Yeah, that's the real answer, right? Yeah, I think that's got to be a lot of real art answers. But we have to come up with better things for grant applications, right?
I think we should be able to say, I just thought it would be cool to put a thing on a thing, and I think that should be acceptable.
And I was right. It was interesting. So.
Balloon Guide, he was like, yeah, there you go. Now tell me about the set for this show. Sounds like there's more to it than just projections. So tell me about the visual in terms of the set for this show.
Yeah. So we've worked with Echoes, you, as a set designer and then also worked with Jessica Hamstrack, who is a visual artist. And what Jessica has done for us is create these big plastic bag art installations. So kind of picture like a waterfall made out of plastic garbage bags pouring out of an oil barrel is what's happening on stage. And those are quite beautiful. And I'm going to just go ahead and steal her words. Jessica. Heavestra. Just so we all know who I am crediting here, but she told me when she peru was building these, that what she liked about what we were creating that mirrored what she felt was happening in the play, is that we're playing on that tension between something being beautiful and giving us something appealing that we like, but also being wrong and dirty. And so you see this sculpture and it's quite voluminous and shiny and really pretty looking, but it is made of plastic. It's made of this awful, awful thing that we're all here to talk about how bad it is. So that tension, and I thought that was really neat. And also the tension between something being so clean and beautiful and pristine, but actually so dirty and evil. Yeah. So that content which I liked, I was like, yeah, I like it. Let's put those up.
That's fine. Now, you are a theater artist and you are also a visual artist. This is a podcast about theater, but I like the arts. So tell me about can you tell me about your visual art and when you started painting or doing visual art?
Yeah, so I actually was into visual art before I was into cedar. And in high school, I was more committed to the visual arts than I was to cedar until an amazing drama teacher changed my mind. But my visual art is mostly drawing, actually line drawing with just ink and also more like realism drawing with pencil work. And then in the last couple of years, I've just started to get into painting with gouache and watercolor and acrylic but I really like it. One of the things I like about my visual arts practice is I didn't end up pursuing it professionally. I continued to pursue it out of just like a desire to create art, which means I think I have a lot there's no pressure in there. If I don't create visual art for a year, literally no one's going to care. And when I do create it, it's always motivated truly from an emotional place in the way. As a theater artist, I often am creating because there's a sense that I need to, like you need to prove something, or like, if you don't create something, you're going to fall off the treadmill of relevancy, or that it's my job. Like, I have to, you know, to do something, I have to make something. And I don't feel that way with art, so visual art. So yeah, they're complementary that way.
Yeah. I want to drill down on that thing you just said about the way that there's the pressure to create to make sure that you're doing something. And I think that that's something that we all have felt. And we all feel like, if I'm not doing this thing, then am I an artist? And then the pandemic happened and a lot of people were like, oh, what does this mean? Who am I? All this sort of stuff. And some people hit the ground running and creating, and other people took longer. Did you experience on the theater realm sort of like taking a downtime, taking a breath in the past three and a half years? And how did that feel? As because it's something that we don't tend to do in theater very often.
Yeah, well, actually, to be honest, my work as a theater artist, especially because I work mostly as a director, actually means that I go long swaths of time without gigs. And that's not uncommon to me. And I was actually in the middle of a long swath of not working on a project when the pandemic hit. And in a weird way this is going to sound terrible, but in a weird way, everyone was stopped to do theater. Stopped from doing theater. And I was no longer just like, taking a break, everyone was taking a break. It made me feel less of that pressure and I got to relax. And then that coupled with the fact that I started writing this play and I also started working with a number of other playwrights to get their work off the ground. So I actually, in the last couple of years, have had a big resurgence and crossed off a lot of career milestones in my life. For me, the pandemic kind of had that opposite effect. But I do want to stress, especially people who are listening yes. I do not have back to back to back to back work. Like, I think there is a conception that everyone is getting a ton of work all the time.
Oh, yeah, we love to portray that. We love to portray that. Like, oh, what is so all the time. Oh, yeah. I hate that question, by the way. That's the first question that theater people always ask each other. And I hate it partially because I'm always working on something, but I don't like to talk about it always, especially if it's an early stage. People are like, what are you working on? And I'll be like, It's interrupted to talk about it. I don't want to say anything quite yet. And they get awkward and shit. But it's like the worst question.
Exactly. The question I've switched to is, what's got you excited these days, too?
That's a much better question.
Yeah. And it could be work. You know, someone will you know, if they want to talk about their work, then they can use that as an excuse. But it might also be like, I'm just learning how to bake bread.
I mean, hey, yeah, absolutely. Now, the name of your theater company, the theater company that you're the artistic director of is Pencil Kit Productions. Now, where does that name come from? Does it come out of your visual art or tell me about that.
I got to be honest with you. That name comes from when I signed up for the Fringe Lottery in 2015, and you have to put down a company name. And I looked around my house and said, what is nearby that I can name a company after? And I saw a publicity, and I was like, puzzle protections. Yeah, a bit of an alliteration thing going on. I'll go with that.
And the desperation of the desperation of Fringe application forms has been the birth of so many theater company names. And every time I hear it, it's like, you think there's going to be some real deep answer to it. It's just like, I needed a name for Fringe, and this is what we ended up with.
Yeah, good on fringe fruit just pushing.
Us all to exactly come up.
Exactly. But I feel good that the name did work, and we had, like, a nice lobo design at that time. And, yeah, it all worked. I'm glad that it worked out.
Nice you alluded to a bit of your theater journey, but I want to talk a bit more about your theater origin story because you mentioned that you were going to go into the visual arts until a theater teacher changed your mind. Now, at that point, before that, did you have any kind of experience of theater, or was that your first experience of theater? And how did one teacher change your focus from art to I'm going to do theater with my life.
So I had theater. I've been in, like I was in Calgary, young people's theater plays, like the community theater for kids. Growing up, I did a lot of theater outside of school, but it was always an. Outside of school thing. And then when I was picking my courses for high school, I felt like I had to kind of pick because I'm also really big on math and sciences. I knew I was going to take at least two sciences, all the math courses big on the academics. So it really came down to I could only pick one art that I was going to do. And I remember thinking at the time, it's easy for me to do theater with this community theater that I do theater with, and at school it makes more sense for me to focus in on visual art. So that was kind of the starter to it. And then I ended up auditioning for the school play and getting a role, which I remember really shocked me at the time because I wasn't part of the drama kid community and it was like a five person show, so I really did not think I was going to get it. It was kind of shot in the dark and I did, and it wasn't incredible experience with drama. Teacher. Her name is Caitlin Gallish and Lowe when she works at Western Canada High School. She's a brilliant director that her kids just did a devised theater piece that went to high performance rodeo. So very neat work that she's doing with kids, and that was incredible. So after that show, I was like, oh my God, I think I need to get into drama class. Like, I want to be with these people. I want to keep working with you. And so she let me skip grade ten and go straight into eleven and twelve in grade twelve. Like, I did grade eleven and twelve seater back to back in the last year of high school. And in that same year, my parents were probably like, what just happened? So I was committed to the visual arts, but I was also committed to math. So I thought I would do something like architecture because that would unify the math side of my brain and the visual art. My parents are all geared up for years. They're like, yeah, she's going to do architecture. It's going to be great, what a great job. And then I'm like, Actually, I think I'm going to be a theater artist. But yeah, the decision was made, frankly, by my drama teacher. She pulled aside like a handful of us one day in grade twelve and was like, okay, we need to start preparing your auditions for university. And I was like, what? That's like a thing that people go to, like, didn't even think that was the thing. I remember looking around at the other people being like, did I miss a conversation? Why am I in this conversation? She just talked about it as if it was like a real thing that could actually happen. And I was like, well, if it is a real thing that can actually happen, doesn't sign me up. I want to do that.
Was that like your first inclination or first inkling of the idea that this is something you could do? Like, that this could be like a profession?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, it really didn't occur to me that that was like a professional thing that I think real people did. I mean, I went to plays, I don't know what I was thinking, but it just felt it felt so far away, like those are stars on stage. That's not like a real thing.
Yeah. And then so you went to Tmu and that's what brought you to Toronto?
Yes.
And you stayed?
I stayed. My mother hates that, but yeah, I stayed.
Which was a more difficult conversation, telling your mother you were going into theater or that you were going to stay in Toronto?
Probably that I was going to stay in Toronto, but she got like it would be like, oh, I'm coming home for summer each year and then I come home for summer a little bit less and then I got a jump and then I'm just going to stay put. So it was like a slow dying of the dream that I was kind.
Of eased into to it.
Yeah. But I got to say, the dream was non dead. Every time I talked to her on the phone, she's like, you could still move back to Calgary. I mean, I could probably afford some property at some point in the future if I move back to Calgary. That'll never happen in Toronto.
No. And that is why Alberta advertises Torontoians to go to Alberta.
And I do look at those sometimes and I'm like.
Yeah, absolutely. Now math. I will be upfront about my math experience. I was diagnosed with dyscalclia very young, so math is not a thing that my brain goes to. Was math always a thing for you? Was it always like a thing? I'm good at this.
Yeah, I was always good at it when I was a kid. And then in high school, I was doing advanced math courses or completing calculus early while I was in grade eleven. And that was fun and I liked it. And I sometimes do wish that I'd had a teacher that had done the same thing that my drama teacher had done for me when I was in high school for math. Because again, it just didn't occur to me that math was something that could be fun and interesting. Like, I was good at it, but it wasn't a cool, interesting thing to be good at. So I just didn't pay that much attention.
I was just naturally good at the math. And nobody was ever like, we can nurture this.
No, no one's really pushed me in any. My parents really just like, let me do whatever the heck I wanted, which was lots of stuff. I mean, you know, I did all the advanced math courses, but no one was ever like, yeah, you should really you know what I mean? But then I became a maths tutor, and once I started teaching math on my own, the burden of it is gone because now I'm kind of just doing it for fun, for my own thing to teach other people. I was like, oh, this is so much funner. Like what I do when I get to teach calculus now. I'm like, I really enjoy it. Those are my favorite sessions.
And I'm like, I find do you find interesting ways to help people understand the math? Are you working with people who are having trouble with math and you find different ways to help them understand what the numbers are doing?
Yeah, I do. Yes. And I work with kids. The youngest kids I work with have been in grade five, and then the oldest ones I work with are in grade twelve and varying ranges. Right. There's, like, kids who are working in calculus, and then there's kids who are just trying to figure out their times tables. So yeah. And each kid needs math explained in a slightly different way. So it is also kind of a creative endeavor to try and teach different people math in a way that will work. But also it has to come from my brain. So it has to be how I understand math. Right, but painted in a way that they will understand it.
You have to find some kind of translation tool yeah.
Where it matters. It's a lot like directing, actually. Something in your brain. You need it in their brain. How are you going to do this?
Interesting. The worlds do Collide. Now, this show that you started writing in 2019, and you're basically about to perform it as we record this, you're going to start performing this next week. Not to stress you out of it, I know that you are super proud of the team for this show. When did the team for I Love the Smell of Gasoline start to be assembled?
The team that we have right now was assembled for the fall. We did a workshop performance at the Root Test Festival in the fall. But the project has been developed by a lot of different hands. So I want to give a shout out to Louisa Lunaras and Emily Jung and Jay Northcott, who have also worked on the project in the past as projectionists through different workshops. But the team we have now came together in the fall, and so that's all the designers and the projectionists that are currently working on the show, the stage manager, et cetera, that's what it really came together.
And how did you go about finding the right people to fill these roles? What does that process look like? To find people to be like, hey, we're doing this weird projection thing? Who are the right people to assemble into the Avengers for this show?
I got to tell you, it's really difficult, actually. It's really difficult down to, like, how do you even put out a call? Like, who are you trying to target? There are no projection artists out there or overhead projection artists out there. So how did we do that? Well, I'm just going to tell you case by case what it was Elise, who is one of our projection artists. Elise WA. She worked on Shadow Girls, which is the play that I referenced, that I co created with Kesha Palm, and that was also an overhead projection play. And so she worked on that. And she is gifted at this stuff. Like, if there was an overhead projection artist title, she would have done a great job. And she actually doesn't even work in theater as much anymore. She works as a doula and a yoga instructor and has her own business that she's running. And I just called her up and I was like, well, listen, I need you to come back to see her. I need you to do this for me. And she was like, yeah, you know what? Absolutely. Like, I'll go through that open door. So that's how I got her on the project. Jesse is a projection artist who works as a puppeteer often. So I targeted them because I was like, okay, someone who works with puppeteering is going to be good with their hands, good with visuals. They've done shadow puppets that feels like it's got lots of transferable skills. And it did. They're also great at it. And then Steph, our last projectionist, was one of the directors, the Codirector will, one of his colleagues that he'd worked with before. And I honestly had just been like, hey, we need a third projection artist. Do you know anyone who would have this niche set of skills, including being good with their hands, visually oriented, a sense of rhythm? Anyone? And he was just like, okay, well, there's this one girl that I think would be really great to work with. She's never done it before, but I just have that feeling she'll be good at it. And she was. So we lucked out. But in the past, when I put out calls, I don't know, I just say everything I just said about you have to be good with rhythm, good with your hands. Yeah, it's so niche. I don't know, really niche skill set, but fascinating.
I mean, it's not something you see every day. So, like, I can I only I can only think of one other show that used overhead projection that I saw many years ago. But it's the only show that I've seen that has used the overhead projector. I would say the slides were utility slides and not like artistic slides for that show. So it's not something you often see. So it's interesting to hear you describing. How do you describe what this is for people who are going to do it? You are creating a new role.
Actually, I often describe it as, like, choreography. I'm like, it is an hour and it's 65 minutes of you doing choreography with your hands. Because it's also not just transparency. We do print out a lot of transparency. Like those acetates you were talking about. But we also put a dish full of water on the projector and we also layer on of course, now, I can't think of a single other image, of course, a lot of different things. So it's not just NIM. Yeah.
Anyway, the interesting thing is now, this is like such a logistics question, but do you, as somebody has used this overhead projector in the past, do you have A, more than one projector or in B, more than one bulb? Or is it like, this is the only projector and if it ever dies, we can never do a projector show again because nobody makes these.
Yeah, it is a bit.
No, just I was reacting to the yeah, it.
Is a bit of like a low key stress that we run into every once in a while. Okay, so I own personally five overhead projector, which is just a reasonable amount for any sane person to have.
Absolutely. Most people own at least between three and five.
Yeah, I've just accumulated these over the years, but I would say only three of them really work great. And those are the three we're using for the shelf. We did have to buy a bunch of backup bulbs. And the bulbs are expensive because they are so niche.
Right.
And if one of those breaks, we could use one of the other projectors in the interim, but it would have some kind of sacrifice. Like not as bright would be the biggest thing, but otherwise we have to try and source another one last minute. I mean, you can find them on Kajiji and you can find them on Facebook. But I am also kind of cognizant. I'm like there is a limited time stamp. Eventually there are going to be no overhead projectors. There are civil machines and they're going to break. Like supply is dwindling.
Not just supply of the machines themselves, but all the bulbs.
And there's no displacement parts. Like if one thing breaks on it.
No, you would almost have to find somebody who could like, if possible, 3D print you a replacement because nobody's producing those parts anymore.
You know what, though? I do wonder if you had money to hire people who are good at building things. They're pretty damn simple machines.
Sure. Yeah.
I feel like you could build a projector from scratch and the right person could do that, probably, which is too much sweat.
Yeah. Just they have to also blow manually create the bulb as well, to find somebody to do an eye.
I guess you could probably use a different type of bulb, maybe.
I guess. Yeah. I mean, if you're building it from scratch, you can use whatever. Yeah, maybe when the industrial version of the show happens, you'll be able to do that. Now, in terms of putting the show on its feet and getting the final version, like I said, you're opening next week or this week, if you're listening to this. When it comes out, in terms of putting it together, you've got your team, what goes into the process of the behind the scenes, getting it on the stage and working with all of that, how does that come together?
It's really, really collaborative. So I'm co directing the piece with William Dow, who is a really brilliant emerging director. And all the projections are, I would say, collaboratively developed. Some of them have been developed in the room with the projection artists that are present. Some of them were developed in workshops with the previous projections that I mentioned. Some of them were just concocted in my brain as I was writing. But we always get into the room and everybody, including the stage manager, also Taylor Young, has also worked as one of the projectionist before everyone gets a say in what the projections are going to look like. So that's really collaborative. And it was a bit of a weird process, especially for me because I'm the playwright and the performer. And then also designing these projections and co directing. And in the fall, what it looks like, we had to prioritize because staging the projections takes a lot of time. So we kind of built the show around the projections, and then I had to act within them with kind of the process, which is different than a typical structure where you build a show around actors and you add design on top of that. It was the opposite. We built the container for the show and then inserted me as a performer.
But I could definitely see the need for that as far as, like, if you've got all this choreography going on to get the projections working, that's sort of the machine of the show that has to work. And you can, as the performer, can be somewhere within that. It would be almost impossible to work the other way around.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Straightforward. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You've done shows that did use projection in the past. Was that a similar situation then, or is this a more elaborate production? As far as the projections go?
This is more elaborate just in that, I mean, right now it's a 65 minutes show, but at the Root Test Festival, it was an 80 minutes show. So I know I should get a lot of crops as a playwright for shaving that many pages off my script.
So that's a lot of pages. That's a lot of babies to kill. Yeah.
I was like, oh, my darlings. Anyway, what was I going to say? So, yeah, just the scale. There's just so much more of it. Shadow Girls was a really tight, like, I don't know, under 50 minutes, I think. Short little show. But it still took it was very labor intensive to get 50 minutes of overhead projection work. And for that show, we had four projectors coming, like in an L shaped stage. The two projectors on each side going from different directions. It was quite elaborate tech time there. So, yeah, this one is bigger, just in that it's a bigger space, more design components and a longer script, but technically about the same. The images can only get so complex with the overhead projectors. So, yeah. Does that answer the question?
Yeah, absolutely it does. Absolutely it does. So, last question for you is, after all of this time, working on this show from 2019, going through workshops and doing at the Ruthless Festival, and now getting to here, is there something you are most looking forward to discovering from this production?
Yes, this production. The big new thing that I'm very excited about is that we have ASL interpretation on two of the night. And we just speaking today. What is it today? It's February 28. We just started ASL rehearsals today. So the next three days are dedicated to ASL. We've got Sage I actually haven't said their name out loud. Their last name out loud. Lovell. Lovell, who is working as a performer alongside me. And we have Gaytri Pursad and Kiri Interpreters as well. And it's just been fascinating. Like, today was fascinating to see. How do we translate from my spoken English into ASL? And it's just really fascinating how we block it. I'm really excited to see how that turns out.
Fascinating. My father was a teacher at Schools for the Deaf through most of my life. So although I never picked up the sign language, I always was fascinated with watching him turn words into into signs. It's not just like it's not a direct translation. So I always found that fascinating.
Yeah. One of the things that I learned today that there are three different signs for Calgary, and all of them are interesting. I'm going to describe them because I love them so much. One is the Shaking Sea, and one is like finger guns, which makes sense. Like a cowboy western thing for Calgary, which I love. And then one is gesturing to the elbow, which I thought was great because I introduced Calgary off the top of the show as being at the Mogonstas, which is blackfoot for Elbow. It's the place where the Bow River and the Elbow River meet. And so that is such a beautiful interpretation of Calgary for it to be adjusted to the elbow. So I love that.
That's fascinating. That's great. Clarence, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
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