Alberta Playwrights Network Archives

Interview Trevor Rueger: Actor, Director, Dramaturge

Posted on May 17, 2020July 2, 2022 by James Hutchison

Trevor Rueger – Photograph by Hannah Kerbes

“When you sit down as a playwright and you start to think about a character that’s going to inhabit your world, that’s a piece of coal. Until you put that piece of coal under pressure, you’re not going to reveal all of its facets. So, characters have to be put under pressure. And that’s where you as a writer, and your audience is going to discover all of the facets of that character. And you’re going to turn that piece of coal into a diamond. With facets that shine and shape and inform. It’s pressure. But the pressure can be lost if the writer gives it too much time.”

Trevor Rueger has been an actor, director, writer and dramaturge for over 30 years. In 2011 he received the Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance as Billy Bibbit in Theatre Calgary/Manitoba Theatre Centre’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As an actor, he’s been seen at Theatre Calgary, Lunchbox Theatre, Sage Theatre, Vertigo Theatre, Stage West, and the Garry Theatre.

His directing credits include When Girls Collide, Columbo: Prescription Murder and Columbo Takes the Rap for Vertigo Theatre, Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets, Life After Hockey and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) for Lunchbox Theatre, Heroes for Sage Theatre, SHE and Matadora for Trepan Theatre, Medea and 33 Swoons for Rocky Mountain College and Courage for Lost Boy Productions

For 20 years he was an ensemble member and writer for Shadow Productions. Trevor was also an original ensemble member of Dirty Laundry which is a weekly improvised soap opera and for 10 years he was chair, writer, and producer of the Betty Mitchell Awards which recognizes excellence in Calgary Theatre.

I’ve worked with Trevor several times over the last decade as a dramaturge and I’ve always found his feedback on my plays to be insightful and constructive. He asks the right questions. Questions that make me think about my story and characters in a manner that results in a better draft.

I sat down with Trevor at Alberta Playwrights Network where he’s been the executive director for the past eleven years to talk with him about his career and his approach to acting, directing, and working with playwrights. Our interview took place in late January, a few months before the current pandemic and lockdown, and so the impacts of COVID-19 on the Canadian Theatre Community were not a part of our conversation.

JAMES HUTCHISON

I’m curious, how did you get interested in theatre and what were some of those early experiences and influences?

TREVOR RUEGER

I didn’t get involved in theatre until high school. I come from a family that was certainly not against the arts. We as kids were just allowed to find our own way. So, when I was a kid, for me, it was sports for the most part.

I was a middle child with six years difference between me and my younger sibling out on an acreage where the nearest neighbour, who was five years older than me, was two miles away. So, I spent a lot of time by myself inventing games and inventing sports and I was quite imaginative and creative, and I was a bit of a gregarious kid as my mother would state.

So, in high school, my mom said, “Well, you should probably take a drama class because you’re such a ham.” And I said, “Okay.” So, I did.

And on the first day of the drama class, it was announced that auditions for the school play were happening that afternoon, and so I signed up for an audition. The play was called Present Tense and it’s a fun little play about a kid in the 50s who’s having trouble with his girlfriend and he imagines that his girlfriend is having all of these wild and crazy love affairs with everyone but him. So, I auditioned for the play and the next day I was cast as the lead in the show.

JAMES

Had you not been cast, who knows?

TREVOR

Oh, exactly. Absolutely. And so, I took drama and played sports all the way through high school. And there was a bit of a pull between my basketball coach and my drama teacher as to which I should focus on. And when I was in grade 12, there were some conflicts between my basketball schedule and my drama schedule and suddenly my schedule all worked out, because unbeknownst to me until I found out many years later, my basketball coach and my drama teacher had gone behind my back and negotiated my schedule.

High School Years

JAMES

Oh, that’s cool. So, then you went off to the University of Calgary to pursue a degree?

TREVOR

I didn’t start out pursuing a degree in theatre. I did one year of General Studies and then I was going to go off into the Education Department where I was going to become a math teacher. But I took drama 200, which was the introductory acting class with Grant Reddick. Halfway through the course you get your grade, and you have a little meeting with the instructor.

So, I go into Grant’s office and sit down and Grant says, “The work is really coming along and you’re really doing well and here’s your grade. How are you doing in your other drama courses?” And I said, “I’m not taking any other drama courses, I’m actually, in General Studies and going into the Education Department.” He went, “Oh, no.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He went, “You should probably take the other drama classes.” And I went, “Okay.”

So, I went home and had a challenging conversation with the parents about switching my major and going into the drama department.

JAMES

How did you approach that? I mean, you said they were pretty open but a number of years ago there was more of a thought that you picked a career and stuck with it. You didn’t have options. Now days people will have four or five careers.

TREVOR

That was certainly their major concern. This does not seem like a career choice. This does not seem like something you can make a living at. This sounds like something, that while it may satisfy you in one way, is going to be incredibly challenging. And so, they’re really looking out for me, right?

JAMES

As parents do.

TREVOR

Yeah, absolutely. It was a difficult conversation. It was three or four years later that I finally realized they were acting out of love and protection and wanted the best for me. But I kind of had them over a barrel because they had made a promise to all of their kids that if you went to university or college they would pay for it. So, I threw the gauntlet down and said, “That’s fine. I am out of here and you’re really reneging on your promise.” So, there was some negotiation and my dad kept pushing me to do a fallback degree afterward. But oddly enough, all the way through my university I was working professionally as an actor. I was studying during the day and doing shows at night.

JAMES

What kind of shows?

TREVOR

I got my first paycheck from Stephen Hair for doing a straight play called Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie at Pleiades Theatre back in that time. I think I played a police officer who had six lines.

Pleiades Mystery Theatre – Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

JAMES

So, you’re in university and right away you get taken in by the Calgary theatre community. How do you think that helped you build your career here in the city?

TREVOR

I have to take a step back slightly because I already knew a lot about the Calgary theatre community before university because my high school drama teacher Kathryn Kerbes was a professional actor and did some shows while she was a teacher. And her husband Hal Kerbes was quite well connected and a fantastic artist and actor, singer, and costumer. He did it all. In fact, our high school drama class was thrown a party by Hal and Kathryn Kerbes at their home after we graduated where they invited all of their theatre friends over. And so, at that point, I was already quite well immersed and I already knew a few of the people who were part of the cast of my first Pleiades show.

JAMES

So, how do you approach a character? How do you get into the mind of the person you’re going to be? The character you’ll be portraying.

TREVOR

I start big. I start with a big wide canvas. And then I bring the lens into smaller and smaller and smaller details. The first thing I look at is the narrative journey and arc of the character. And then figuring out within that arc what the character wants. That to me is the fundamental question approaching any material. What does the character want? Then once I discovered that I ask how does the character fit into the story? Then I start to look at the text. What does my character say? What does my character say about myself? What do other characters say about my character?

And then I start to develop a physical vocabulary that comes from the world around me and the world that we’re creating in the rehearsal hall and then ultimately on stage. If I’m in a family drama one of my tricks is to look at my relatives and steal their moves. I’ll decide within the family structure who is the most influential on my character, and then I’ll pick up their mannerisms.

So, for instance, I was playing Happy in a production of Death of a Salesman at the Garry Theatre directed by Sharon Pollock. And I just watched the physical mannerisms of the actor who was playing Willie, and the actor playing my older brother Biff and it wasn’t mimicry, but I just went, with a similar physical vocabulary.

JAMES

Any particularly fond memories of a role that you really enjoyed working through and capturing,

TREVOR

I’ve enjoyed a lot of the work I’ve done but the work I did as a young actor with Sharon Pollock at the Garry Theatre was really great stuff to be able to cut my teeth on. The Garry Theatre was a pretty amazing experience because I was directed by her in roles that I would never have had an opportunity to even audition for at other theatres in Calgary or across the country. I played Alan Strang in Equus, I played Happy in Death of a Salesman and I played two or three characters in a production of St. Joan. But I was so green. I was absorbing the work without actually being able to articulate what I was doing.

Cast from the 2016 Stage West Calgary Production of Suite Surrender by Michael McKeever

JAMES

What was it like for your family to come and see you on stage?

TREVOR

They were always supportive, and they came to see as much of the stuff that I was in as they could. And my dad was quite gregarious as well and spent a fair amount of time telling stories in various pubs in and around Forest Lawn, and I would go and meet him every once in a while in the afternoon for a beer after class. And going through university my dad was always, “ You know you could get your education degree.” And in year two it was, “You could get a real estate license.” Year three it was, “You know, you could probably turn these drama skills into sales. I know a guy who owns a car dealership. You could sell cars on weekends. Or you could always learn to be a backhoe operator.” So, he was always just going, “Get something else to fall back on. It doesn’t have to be another four-year degree.” And my dad would introduce me when friends would come over to the table as this is my son he’s going to university. Well, finally there was that day my dad introduced me to one of his pals who’d never met me before as, “My son. He’s an actor.” I went alright.

JAMES

So, tell me about what attracts you to directing and what type of shows are you attracted to?

TREVOR

Here’s the thing that I discovered which leads me very well into the world of being a dramaturge. It’s not that I dislike the performance aspect of being an actor. I quite enjoy it. I love putting on the costume. I love walking out in front of an audience. I love hearing them react and knowing that you’ve had an effect on them in some way. But when you get into the run of a show, it’s the law of diminishing returns. So, what I discovered when I started directing, which has led me into dramaturgy, is I love making big discoveries. And that’s the rehearsal hall. It’s the same way as I was just discussing how I approach a character right. Starting with this big broad canvas. So those big discoveries. What is this world that we’re going to create? Who are the people who inhabit this world? How do they connect to each other? What are we telling an audience? What are we showing? What are they seeing? All tied back to, we’re supporting the work of the playwright.

The 2010 Theatre Calgary Production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Dale Wasserman. Based on the novel by Ken Kesey. Directed by Miles Potter.

JAMES

How did you end up getting involved in dramaturgy?

TREVOR

It was working with Sharon Pollock. It really was. It changed the notion of how I look at work and how I look at plays. And at that point, I had no idea what dramaturgy was, but she looks at work as a director, as a writer, as an actor, and with such a writer’s eye, and with such dramaturgical care for the work that it made me read differently.

Again, we were doing Death of a Salesman and in our first read through the actor, playing Willy Loman made a choice with a line delivery on about page eight or nine. And it was our first read-through and Sharon stopped there and went, “That’s a very interesting choice that you’re making. I just want to warn you, let’s not get trapped into that yet because while you do say that and that could be the emotional content of what you’re saying here – forty pages from now you say this.” And I thought – how is she on page eight, and on page forty at the same time, and it was because she had a concept or saw the whole. And it made me start to look at work differently. As an actor to look at work differently. As a director. And then realizing a few years later, oh, that’s dramaturgy. That’s dramaturgy – defending the work of the playwright and seeing the big idea within that world.

JAMES

I find it takes a couple of reads to understand the connection between page eight and page forty because on a first read you don’t always see the connection between the two.

TREVOR

Absolutely. Though, as a dramaturg it’s not that I don’t give work multiple readings before actually crafting a response to a playwright but I generally make my notes on the first reading because for me – what the playwright has asked me to do as the dramaturge is to be their very first audience. And an audience is only going to see a work once. So, I approach it with that mindset. So, I will read it and make my big notes and observations. Then usually upon a second or third reading, I start to be able to see, “Oh, hang on, my bad. I misread that. Oh, I see, that connects to that.” Or, “Mmmm, it seems to be that the idea is shifting or has shifted or wants to shift.”

JAMES

This is why I think it’s very important not to share the work too soon. Because if you share it too soon you can never get that first reader back. Although to help make it fresh again one of the things I find useful is to put the work back into the drawer for six months.

TREVOR

Absolutely. So much of my practice, as a director has touched on that kind of notion. I feel that within the Canadian theatre system, we do not have enough time to rehearse nor do we have enough time to let the work germinate for the artists because of the commercial aspect of things, right, that you have to create a new product virtually monthly or bimonthly. Rehearsal periods are truncated and the work just gets rushed to the stage. So, for me as a director wherever possible I do five-hour days with my cast instead of an eight-hour rehearsal day. We’ll do eight hours for the first couple of days and then we’ll shift as soon as possible to a five-hour day.

JAMES

What do you find the shorter hours do for them?

TREVOR

They come back the next day fresh. They’re still working eight hours. They’re not doing eleven and twelve-hour days. So, they’re actually doing eight hours of work but you only have access to them for five. And that creates within the rehearsal hall a demand to be focused. People come in fresh and you can usually start those final days of rehearsal at noon. So it’s like 12 to 5. So, you come in fresh because you’ve had a morning. You’ve had an evening. You’ve had an opportunity to do some work. You’ve had an opportunity to think about the work. You’ve had an opportunity to reflect on notes. As opposed to coming home at the end of an eight hour day throwing some food in your face, trying to learn your lines, getting up the next morning and taking a look at the work you’re going to be doing the next day. It’s all so exhausting. It’s also exhausting for a director and a stage manager.

Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Chantelle Han as Lilly, Ben Wong as Charlie, and Kelsey Verzotti as Jade in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets by Dale Lee Kwong. Directed by Trevor Rueger – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

So, tell me about APN.

TREVOR

The Alberta Playwrights Network is a membership-driven organization devoted to supporting, developing, and nurturing the work and the playwright through education, advocacy, outreach, and any other resource or technology that we can provide our membership.

JAMES

You’ve been running APN for eleven years. Where do you think you were as an organization when you started and where do you think you are now?

TREVOR

APN, as I’ve always known it, was a healthy, vibrant, energized organization. And the organization that I inherited, certainly was that. Strong membership base. Pretty interesting programming that people were taking advantage of. But over the last eleven years, the biggest thing that I’ve seen shift and change and alter is the theatrical landscape.

When I came into the organization Canada Council had just paid for a research paper to be written by Ben Henderson who was with Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre and Martin Kinch who was with Playwrights Theatre Center in Vancouver. Both organizations very much like APN. They wrote a paper called From Creation to Production that talked about the new play development model, as it existed in Canada, and as it existed in the UK and in some parts of the United States. And at that time, it was a pretty standard that a play gets selected for a workshop. A play gets developed. A play gets produced. Or a playwright gets developed and produced.

There were a lot of ideas in there that I looked at and I read. “Okay, is APN doing this? Yeah, we seem to be doing that. All right. That seems to be successful. We seem to be doing this. That seems okay. We don’t seem to be doing this. I don’t know if our organization could ever do this.”

So, I enacted a five-year plan at that point which focused on playwright advocacy and doing more work and providing greater agency for our members by getting their plays into the hands of people that might produce them. So, through that came a number of things including the catalogue which featured plays ready for production by our members. Fast forward ten years later, that paper, From Creation to Production, is completely out of date.

JAMES

It’s now a historic document.

TREVOR

Yeah, absolutely. And so that’s why APN with funding from the Canada Council is currently engaging in this national research project, to discover – who we are and where we are as a nation – and as producers and creators and playwrights and theatre companies – and trying to figure out what the landscape is as it pertains to new play development, new play creation, new play curation and to find out what we can do.

Mike Czuba, Kira Bradley, Melanie Murray Hunt, and Trevor Rueger workshopping new work with APN

JAMES

Well considering where we are right now can you talk a little bit about diversity and inclusion as an organization.

TREVOR

Three years ago, at a board retreat, one of our board members brought up as a point of discussion that we don’t seem to be doing a lot of work in the realm of diversity which lead to a really great conversation that we had never had as an organization. Because our organization has always been open, and available, to anyone and everyone.

JAMES

If you’re a playwright, call us.

TREVOR

If you’re a playwright, call us. We don’t discriminate based on age, race, country of origin, religious background, sexuality, or sexual identity. None of that has ever been a part of our membership process. And we’ve never asked those questions, nor did we ever care to. So that led us to the discovery that while that may be our internal belief that may not be our external perception.

And as we’ve done some surveys and spoken to diverse theatre creators about this what we discovered is not that the outside perception was necessarily wrong, but that the outside perception was different from our internal belief. We believed that we were an open door for everyone, but what we discovered is we have to take that door out to people and let them know that we exist and that we have this belief?

JAMES

It’s not enough to just have the door open.

TREVOR

Exactly. So, we’ve held a couple of meetings with diverse artists from across a number of disciplines both in Calgary and Edmonton. We’re also undergoing a process with the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres and there’s a number of Calgary theatre companies that have gotten together for two or three meetings to have frank and open discussions about equity, diversity, and inclusion that are chaired and convened by diverse artists which has been really eye-opening to us.

We just got some money from Calgary Arts Development, to dig into this work a little deeper. So, we’ve just hired what we’re calling a Community Outreach Ambassador, who for a period of time is going to go out and engage with diverse and underrepresented communities and just have frank and honest conversations with them about what our organization does. Here’s who we are. Do you have creators? Do you have writers? What can we offer you? Is there anything that we could provide that would assist you on your artistic journey?

By the end of this year we’ll probably be creating some value statements that we will publish on our website and those value statements around equity, diversity, and inclusion will trickle down and be at the forefront of thoughts regarding programming.

For ten years Trevor Rueger was the chair, writer, and producer of the Betty Mitchell Awards. The Betty Mitchell Awards recognize excellence in Calgary’s Professional Theatre Community. Photograph by Jasmine Han

JAMES

So, let’s talk about dramaturgy. How do you engage with the playwright? What works best?

TREVOR

For me, dramaturgy is a philosophy. And the philosophy is simply about helping the playwright find the ideas, both big and small in the world that they’re trying to create. I tend to start every dramaturgical session by asking the playwright, “Tell me about you and tell me about your work. And tell me about the creative process that you’ve been engaged in thus far and tell me what you want to say.” A lot of the questions and feedback that I tend to formulate, as I’m reading a work generally always come back to, “What are you trying to say? What do you want the play to say? What do you want the audience to think, feel, and be saying when they’re walking out of the theatre? What’s the experience you want to take them through?” So that’s always where I start a conversation. And that becomes a touchstone from which we can negotiate.

JAMES

Do you have any particular way of breaking down scripts?

TREVOR

There are three things that I really focus on. One is character. If I was to pick up this script as an actor or a director, based on what I’m seeing right now, would I be able to either give a performance, akin to what the playwright has written, or as a director get to a performance that’s akin to what the playwright has written. That’s usually where I have a lot of questions about the character and the character journey. To me, it starts with character, then it moves into structure. How is the world structured? How is your narrative structure? And then my third one is time. I think the notion of time is overlooked by emerging playwrights.

JAMES

What do you mean by time?

TREVOR

What I mean by time is how much time expires in the world of your play. Because time has a powerful effect within a narrative in terms of an emotional state. When I teach my introduction to playwriting, I use the epilogue at the end of Death of a Salesman as an example of time. Linda is standing at Willy’s grave and in the reality of the play he passed two or three days ago. She’s got this beautiful speech about, “I can’t cry Willy. I can’t cry. Every time I hear the screen door open, I expect it’s you. I can’t cry.” And I always ask playwrights in the course, “Okay, so that’s three days ago, but let’s imagine she’s standing at the grave a year later and says those exact same words.”

JAMES

It totally changes everything.

TREVOR

It totally changes everything, right? The audience now is getting a completely different story. And all you’ve done is change the element of time. The actor is going to play it differently. The director is going to approach it differently. So, that’s what I mean by the notion of time, and how time is important and sometimes we give a story too much time. It becomes too epic and the hero’s journey loses all of its stakes.

When you sit down as a playwright and you start to think about a character that’s going to inhabit your world, that’s a piece of coal. Until you put that piece of coal under pressure, you’re not going to reveal all of its facets. So, characters have to be put under pressure. And that’s where you as a writer, and your audience is going to discover all of the facets of that character. And you’re going to turn that piece of coal into a diamond. With facets that shine and shape and inform. It’s pressure. But the pressure can be lost if the writer gives it too much time.

L to R: Col Cseke, Kathryn Kerbes & Trevor Rueger in an APN workshop for Saviour by Maryanne Pope – January 2019

JAMES

I really like the fact that you’re talking character, structure, and time, because then it doesn’t matter whether it’s comedy – doesn’t matter whether it’s a tragedy – because those function in every story. And those things are the elements the story is built out of.

Okay, I have one final question. Speaking as a dramaturge you’re working with a new playwright. He’s written a new play called Hamlet. What are your dramaturgical notes on Hamlet because it’s a pretty good play?

TREVOR

Yeah, it’s pretty good. One question would be, “Do you feel that the Fortinbras plot is overwritten for what thematically you think it’s giving you?” Because that’s the plot that always gets cut. And I ask people when I’m teaching my introductory playwriting course, “In Hamlet, how long from the first scene on the parapets of Elsinore castle to the end of the play? How much time has expired in the real world?”

JAMES

You know, I’ve never thought about it, but it feels like it’s a lot of time. Well because he travels to England and comes back. I don’t know. A month. Two months?

TREVOR

Six months.

JAMES

Six months.

TREVOR

Six months in order to travel by boat to and from England. And there is a reference to six or seven months actually later in the text. But if Hamlet was to be that slow and wishy-washy for seven months…

JAMES

…he wouldn’t have our sympathy. We’d be frustrated with him.

TREVOR

Yeah, we’d want to punch him in the face. So, our mind shortens it to an acceptable amount of time. Yeah, I could see how he would have difficulty making a choice in two months. But you know, if I’m really thinking about the fact that it’s taking him six to seven months to make a decision, I’m starting to turn off the character. Yeah, so maybe you want to take a look at time.

I did a speech for a seniors group at Theatre Calgary many years ago about dramaturgy and I created a fictional case study on if I was to dramaturg Hamlet, but it was like, draft one, right? So, Shakespeare comes to me and he goes, “Okay, I got this great idea for a play. Here’s what’s going to happen. Kid comes back from college because his dad’s died. And then his mom is sleeping with his uncle and his uncle killed his dad.”

“Oh, that sounds really great.”

“Yeah. And then he enacts revenge.”

“Okay, great. Question. Did he witness the murder?”

“No, he did not witness the murder.”

“Did somebody witness the murder?”

“No, no, no. This is how the uncle is getting away with it. Nobody witnessed the murder.”

“So how does Hamlet know that his uncle did it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you said he exacts revenge on his uncle for the murder of his father?”

“Yeah?”

“So how does he know his uncle killed his father?”

“Ah, yeah, I see what you’re saying. (Pause) Ghost of his dad?”

“Ghost of his dad! Good idea. Let’s have him show up.”

Alberta Playwrights’ Network is a not-for-profit provincial organization of emerging and established playwrights, dramaturgs, and supporters of playwriting. Our members come from across the province in both rural and urban communities, with the largest portion of our membership residing in Calgary and Edmonton. We strive to be a truly province-wide organization, with representation from all corners of the province. Alberta Playwrights’ Network exists to nurture Albertan playwrights and provide support for the development of their plays. APN promotes the province’s playwrights and plays to the theatre community while building and fostering a network of playwrights through education, advocacy, and outreach.

DOWNLOAD – James Hutchison Interviews Trevor Rueger: Actor, Director, Dramaturge

This image links to an interview with Matt Dy the Director of Script Competitions at the Austin Film Festival

Interview with playwright, screenwriter, blogger, and novelist: Maryanne Pope

Posted on January 14, 2019September 8, 2023 by James Hutchison

Photograph of Author Maryanne Pope
Playwright, Screenwriter, Blogger, and Novelist — Maryanne Pope – Playwright, Screenwriter, Blogger & Novelist

Maryanne Pope is a playwright, screenwriter, blogger and novelist. She is the author of A Widow’s Awakening and the founder of Pink Gazelle Productions where she blogs and works to create literary, theatrical, and cinematic works that challenge, enrich and inspire both artist and audience.

“It’s about the power of dreams. And I’m a huge person on believing in dreams. I mean that’s what I live for is to achieve my dream. I just think dreams are hugely important and I just – I don’t know – I just decided a long time ago – for many reasons – the big one being John’s death – that I don’t want to die having lived an unfulfilled life.”

Maryanne is also the Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund a charity committed to raising public awareness about why and how to ensure workplaces are safe for everyone, including emergency responders. The charity was started after the death of Maryanne’s husband, John Petropoulos, who was a member of the Calgary Police Service. John died in the line of duty on September 29, 2000 while investigating a break and enter complaint when he stepped through a false ceiling, because there was no safety railing to warn him of the danger, and he fell nine feet into the lunchroom below and succumbed to brain injuries.

I sat down with Maryanne to discuss the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund and her life as a writer.

JAMES HUTCHISON

You’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time?

MARYANNE POPE

Oh yeah, I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was seven. I think that was probably when I first thought of it. But I never really got the concept that you actually have to sit down and write. It was always something in the distance that I wanted to do.

JAMES

As far as your writing career goes your husband’s death seems to be a marker. There was a life before that and a life after that.

MARYANNE

After I graduated from the University of Calgary when I was twenty-five and up until John’s death when I was thirty-two I wanted to try and write a novel. I had no interest in playwriting or screenwriting or anything like that. So, I started to work on a novel but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I was just creating a female protagonist who’s unhappy with her life and wanted to change the world and become a writer. And I wasn’t unhappy with my life, but I was unhappy with the fact that I wasn’t finding the time to write because by this time John and I were married. We’d bought a house. The financial pressure was on. The family pressure was on – are you going to have kids? You’ve got the mortgage now. John’s working full time. I was working full time, and so I was writing less and less and I was very anxious.

MARYANNE

I knew I was on the right path with the right guy, but I wasn’t doing the work that I knew I had to do, and I was stressed right up until the point before the night John died when we had this big discussion and I said to him, “I am so scared that I am going to wake up twenty years from now and still not have become a writer.” And we had just had a big fight. We’d come back from a holiday and we had a big fight and we didn’t speak to each other for two days and he turned to me and he said, “Maryanne you know that is exactly what is going to happen in twenty years. You are not going to become a writer until you make your writing a priority – until you believe in yourself you will not become a writer.” And he died that night. He went to work and died at 4:00 o’clock the next morning.

And within two weeks after his death I sat down at my computer and I started to write what would become in eight years A Widow’s Awakening and of course because he died in the line of duty that meant that I was financially okay. My house was paid off. I got his income for twenty-one years and then I switch over to his pension, so I got exactly what Virginia Woolf had said – in a room of one’s own women need a secure – or any writer really – needs a secure income and a place of their own to be able to truly write. So, I got what I wanted, but I lost that which I loved the most.

JAMES

The interesting thing to me is how much of your writing has been focused on that tragedy and dealing with it. You have your novel A Widow’s Awakening and you have a one-act play called The Widows.

MARYANNE

Yes, it touches on that.

JAMES

And then you also have Saviour which is a full-length play.

MARYANNE

And that is hugely about John’s death, but it’s also about what I imagine his perspective to be on his death. And so he’s in the process of dying – that’s very much an imagined perspective on that but then I’m in the play as well.

JAMES

Can you encapsulate Saviour, so people understand what it’s about?

MARYANNE

Saviour explores the concept of whether or not another person can save a person or whether the true meaning of a saviour is to help a person save themselves – to empower someone. So, this play looks at the example between John and me because his death gave me the financial freedom to pursue my dream. I just don’t get him and he doesn’t get to pursue his dream so it’s a real double-edged sword. And then it also goes into the bigger concept of a saviour from our Christian paradigm and whether or not we are, in some level of our consciousness in the West, expecting a saviour to come back and fix our problems.

JAMES

Death is, of course, a big part of all our lives and I’m wondering in what ways you think our desire to write and tell stories is an attempt for us to navigate our feelings about death and our own mortality?

MARYANNE

Oh, I think it has everything to do with it because I have found that writing about death and loss and grief – my experience with it – helps me sort out and make sense of what happened. Helps me express my feelings and helps me move forward emotionally and psychologically whether it’s a blog or a story. And then to polish it a little bit and share it with other people is a gift and based on the feedback I get people do resonate with it because you’re right – death is a part of all our lives – we’re all going to go through that you know – losing people we love – or pets we love – or whatever. And when I write about death I like to be super honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly of what I was really thinking and experiencing.

JAMES

In a sense, John’s death fuels or has fueled a large part of your writing how do you feel about that?

MARYANNE

My mom was a psychiatric nurse at one point and she was very concerned about me working on A Widow’s Awakening for so long. And I think there is validity in that because if you constantly write about a tragedy it’s very difficult to move on because you sort of stay stuck in the past.

However, from a creative perspective, it’s an incredible story. And I know from the feedback I get from the book plus when I go out and deliver presentations that it’s a very powerful story and it’s very emotionally impactful. There are many many life lessons in there so I can pull different things for different projects whether it’s presentations, whether it’s a blog, whether it’s a book, whether it’s a screenplay, whether it’s a play. It was horrific to experience John’s death, but in a way the universe not only delivered me the financial means to become a writer the universe delivered me one hell of a story to tell.

JAMES

One of the things you established after John’s death was the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund which is an organization that strives to eliminate preventable workplace fatalities and injuries to first responders by educating the public about its role in helping to keep these workers safe on the job. What initiatives are you the proudest of and have been the most successful in your promotion of that safety message?

MARYANNE

We’ve done eight public service announcements and one ten-minute safety video. The picnic PSA, for example, is about traffic safety and reminds drivers to slow down when they see emergency vehicles – police, firefighters, paramedics, and the tow truck drivers along the side of the road. Then there’s the three put yourself in our boots videos. One tells the story of a police officer in exactly the same situation that John died under, and then there’s one where firefighters get trapped in a burning building because someone left clutter at the emergency exit and they couldn’t get out, and then in the emergency services one the paramedics are impacted because of a distracted driver.

Often, we get the most powerful feedback from people after they’ve seen one of our safety presentations. As part of our safety presentation, we physically go into a business or a school and we’ll talk about John’s death, show our public service announcements and the safety video. And when I’m the one doing the presentation and they hear the story they see it in my face because I’m this widow and then they see the videos and you see the light turn on. And I’ve heard from people in person after the presentation and in lots of e-mails and the number one comment is, “I never thought about safety in our workplace from the perspective of a first responder going in who wouldn’t be familiar with our building. Your story and your public service announcements and your video helped me change my perspective.” And that’s our goal. And I see that shift when I’m the one doing the presentation.

JAMES

Speaking of a shift, back in 2017 you decided to sell your house – put all your belongings into storage – and hit the road with your golden retriever Sadie. Your journey began on January 12, 2018. You left Victoria and headed down into the states for three months of travel and writing staying for short periods in various places and working on different projects and maybe living a bit of a Bohemian life.

MARYANNE

Very Bohemian.

JAMES

What motivated you to take that trip, and what did you learn about yourself as a writer?

MARYANNE

That trip was something I had been wanting to do for a long time. I just needed to have the financial freedom of the house behind me and my stuff in storage so I’m not trying to run a household, and the motivation was just to travel and be on the road, and to write, and to eat road trip food. That’s what motivated me. What I learned though – and this is what I’m still baffled about – is that I love that Bohemian lifestyle! I love life on the road!

Like right now I’m staying in one place for three months and I get a lot of work done, but I’m already getting antsy. And I never, never, would have guessed that about myself even though I’ve been a traveller all my life. And I to love travel but I am also a huge homebody but what I’ve discovered about myself is that home for me doesn’t necessarily have to entail being surrounded by my own things in my own home. Home for me is being with my laptop, my writing, my vehicle, my dog and so wherever I am becomes home. I would have never imagined that about myself. I always thought I’d feel like I was on the road but now I find home is wherever I am. It’s a shift in my thinking.

JAMES

So, now you’re able to write anywhere?

MARYANNE

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely anywhere. And my office is all over the place. And I’ve no problem with the discipline. What I have a problem with is the opposite. Turning it off and taking those breaks and saying, “No, it’s Sunday I’m not going to write today.” But I’ve learned that the breaks even if it’s only one or two days a week that I take off – those payoff in spades when I’m back working because that break away makes my writing that much stronger whereas when I work right through, even if it’s only a few extra hours a day, then I burn out.

JAMES

What were some of the best places you went to on your trip for your writing?

MARYANNE

Sedona is magic. Sedona is one of the best places on the earth that I’ve found to write. So, I’ve gone there twice now. Once on my trip and then I went back at the end of September. I went for a week and did some intensive writing. There’s something there, right? There’s the energy and the vortexes and all that sort of stuff. I tap into it. It’s amazing and I’d just go write in the mornings, and then I’d go for a hike in the afternoon, and then I’d just listen to music in the evening. It’s incredible. I got most of a script written there so that was really good. I would go, for sure, to Sedona again.

MARYANNE

Another place that was extremely magical was Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. And these are all interior like Utah and Arizona which is shocking because I’m a total beach person – a total water person. I live to be by the ocean. And I absolutely loved the Oregon and California coast but these other places were new and just incredible. Yeah, that trip was just life-changing. I had a sense of freedom on that trip that I don’t remember ever experiencing in my life. I loved it. I loved every moment. And Sadie and I had a ball and I got lots of writing done and I just loved it. I loved the whole scene.

JAMES

You also do a lot of blogging so I’m kind of wondering how did the blogging evolve?

MARYANNE

I started blogging in 2010 when I sold my home in Calgary, and I was leaving to go and live on Vancouver Island, and I was working with a marketing person who had suggested writing blogs, and I thought, “Oh God I don’t have time to write blogs on top of everything else, I’m stressed. I’m getting out of this house.” Well, wouldn’t you know it my doggie Sable goes blind. So, here I am in this huge house and normally I’d be out visiting a thousand people because I was leaving Calgary, but I couldn’t because my dog was blind and I live in a house full of stairs. So, I physically had to be with her so I’m in this house that’s all packed up and I took her advice and I started to write a blog about this experience of what it’s like to pack up a house with a blind dog starting on a new journey with so much sadness knowing that this dog isn’t going to be around for very long. And then when I got to Vancouver Island I kept blogging regularly, and I liked the feeling of satisfaction you get from completing a short piece after working on longer pieces that are taking so long to finish like my screenplay, God’s Country, which is about Nell Shipman the silent screen star.

JAMES

I’ve noticed on your blogs that you’ve posted a couple of quotes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

MARYANNE

Yes. Yes. Yes.

JAMES

Is that a favourite book?

MARYANNE

Oh, yeah. I’ve read it so many times now.

JAMES

What does it provide you with?

MARYANNE

Oh, it provides me with the reminder that – it’s the quote – that the universe conspires to help us achieve our dreams. The universe is there. It’s got our back. It will do everything it can to help us along and what seems like a setback is not a setback. It is just an opportunity for us to learn the lessons so that we can move forward in our dream. It’s about the power of dreams. And I’m a huge person on believing in dreams. I mean that’s what I live for is to achieve my dream. I just think dreams are hugely important and I just – I don’t know – I just decided a long time ago – for many reasons – the big one being John’s death – that I don’t want to die having lived an unfulfilled life.

JAMES

So, you were on the road when you celebrated your 50th birthday on February 23rd 2018 with friends in Oceanside California. How did you feel about reaching that landmark and did you gain any new insights about yourself or life now that you’ve lived half a century?

MARYANNE

Well, I was just so flipping excited and I still am. I feel way better than I ever thought I would at fifty. At twenty I thought fifty was old, and I had better have achieved everything I wanted to achieve by then because I’d pretty much have just rolled over and died by then. And now that I’m at fifty I feel great. The only thing is I have lots of energy during the day and during my creative time and stuff but I’m pretty much useless after seven pm. And it used to be a joke and funny and now it is what it is and because of the writing and intellectual work that I do all day I need a lot of sleep, and I just shut down at seven o’clock at night and then I just get up early and go for it. You know the bodies not the same. There are wrinkles and stuff but that stuff doesn’t bother me. I just think it’s like Coco Channel said, “You get the face after fifty that you’ve lived.” It shows. And Gloria Steinem said, “After fifty all the bullshit is gone.” And that I’m noticing. Oh my God, my tolerance for people that are pissing me off – that are toxic – that are bringing me down – that are bugging me – whatever – I don’t have the time for it. I don’t have time for all the extra shit that I don’t want to do anymore. And it has just become so much easier to just say no to that.

JAMES

Well, lets talk a little bit about your screenplay God’s Country which as you mentioned is about Nell Shipman the Canadian born silent film actress, screenwriter and director. You’ve been working on that project for a long time so I’m just curious where you’re at with that.

MARYANNE

Ah, yes well that went through a big rewrite in the summer and then I sent it to the director and the producer here in Calgary that I want to work with. And I had a big meeting with the director and he still isn’t happy enough to take it on but we brainstormed ways that I might change it so that he will because I really want to work with these guys they’re so good.

But I had changed the story to be a biopic. So it was cradle to grave and his suggestion was we just need to give it a bit more oomph a bit more magic and you know it’s so funny because this book I’m reading about marketing and stuff which is all about story and about clarifying the message is exactly what this director told me is the flaw in God’s Country at present. Now we have Nell being born – now she’s on vaudeville – now she’s getting married – all this sort of stuff that tells a beautiful story about someone’s life but what is the meat and potatoes of this story.

Canadian actress, author, screenwriter, producer, director, and animal trainer: Nell Shipman

JAMES

Are you talking about her inner motivation?

MARYANNE

Yeah, what does she want? And you know I know her so well now because I’ve lived with this character for fifteen years – I know her family so well now because I’ve become very close with her family – her descendants. And it feels like I’m battling with her instead of working with her. I’m telling the story that she wants me to tell because I’ve read this autobiography and I’ve seen her movies and I want to be true to her but I also want to tell a contemporary story.

I’m just frustrated with myself as a writer because for some odd reason I haven’t always been able to grasp the basics of what a good story is. I’m more of a writer who just wants to tell what I want to tell, and I really don’t care what the textbooks have said about you have to have your inciting incident – you have to have your characters wants – you have to have to have stakes. I know all that but I don’t think I’ve really internalized it and I’m frustrated with myself because those scripts are not getting made.

So now I’m being forced to become a better writer and a better storyteller and that’s not easy, right James? It’s not. It’s growing. It’s exhausting. It’s hard work. I’m tired of being rejected but this is the path I chose and most of the time I love it.

JAMES

So, as you mentioned before, your husband John said to you the night before he died, “Maryanne you know that’s exactly what’s going to happen in twenty years. You are not going to become a writer until you make writing a priority until you believe in yourself you will not become a writer.” So now almost twenty years after his death what do you think John would say to you about what you’re doing and what you’ve accomplished with your writing?

MARYANNE

I think he’d be super proud of what I’ve accomplished and where I’m at, but I think he’d be kind of puzzled, as I am puzzled, as to why some projects are taking so long to complete even though I’m doing my job, and I’m showing up every day and doing the work, and I’m finishing a project and then it goes out into the world and then the world sends it back, and I think he’d be interested – I think we’d be having some good conversations about that.

JAMES

So, then looking ahead what is your vision of life as a writer?

MARYANNE

I would say the life of a writer is learning to embrace the process and learn to love the process of writing. Like the day in and day outness of it. So, for me being able to get up in the morning and be super excited where I’m at – no matter where I’m at in the cycle of a project – no matter if it’s going well or not going well. If it’s not going well to embrace the challenge and if it’s going well to go, “Yes, I’m almost done and it’s going to be great.”

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. This particular post is a combination of two interviews with Maryanne Pope. One conducted on April 8, 2016, and one conducted on December 8, 2018.
DOWNLOAD – James Hutchison Interviews Maryanne Pope

An Interview with Playwright Dale Lee Kwong: Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

Posted on February 21, 2018July 14, 2023 by James Hutchison

“It’s been my goal to have a play at Lunchbox Theatre since 1978. I was in grade twelve when the Stage One program first started, and I don’t even know how I ended up going to all the Stage One readings but I did, and I made a mental note to myself that someday I would like to have a play at Lunchbox.” – Dale Lee Kwong

Calgary Playwright Dale Lee Kwong – Photo by: Tung Bui – illusionistproductions.com

One of the things I love about Lunchbox Theatre is that many of the productions you see on their stage feature local playwrights whose work was developed through the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work. This season alone features several plays that were developed through the festival including Book Club II: The Next Chapter by Meredith Taylor-Parry, Flight Risk by Meg Braem, and the upcoming and very funny Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets written by Dale Lee Kwong.

Dale not only writes plays but also writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction. Her essays have been published in Somebody’s Child: Stories of Adoption, A Family By Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships, and the Malahat Review. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian Literature, Modern Morsels, and The Calgary Project: A City Map in Verse and Visual. Dale often performs at local literary events and sometimes speaks at inclusive churches and organizations like PechaKucha, TALES and The Coming Out Monologues.

I spoke to Dale about her dream of having a play performed at Lunchbox and the journey her play, Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets, took to go from page to stage.

Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Chantelle Han as Lilly, Ben Wong as Charlie, and Kelsey Verzotti as Jade in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES HUTCHISON

When did you get into writing?

DALE LEE KWONG

I’ve always been a writer. I have poems framed in cardboard and typed on Manila paper from 1971 that I gave to my family at Christmas. I wrote a community column for about ten years when I lived in Crescent Heights that was told from the point of view of my dog, Magoo. And in my family I’m always the one that gets called upon to do the toast to the bride or the speech. But my real writing career started about fourteen years ago at the end of a relationship. I went to a writing workshop in Edmonton called Women Who Write and took some introductory writing classes. Classes which didn’t actually critique your material so much as just read it back to you and say what struck them.

JAMES

So, it’s a workshop to encourage the writing process?

DALE

Yes, it’s very much for emerging writers. And I realized I had things I wanted to say and so, the first year after my break up I started enrolling in creative writing courses at the University of Calgary. I took three poetry classes with Tom Wayman, and he’s an awesome professor. During that time I won the CBC Poetry Face Off in Calgary, and that got recorded and aired nationwide, and that got voted on by listeners, where it placed third.

JAMES

What a fabulous boost for the ego.

DALE

It was. At the same time Alberta Theatre Projects and the Alberta Playwrights’ Network ran a 24-hour playwriting competition. I entered, and my first play, which was really just a scene, was called – Is Normie Kwong Your Uncle? And it won a special merit award which gave me a free dramaturgical session with Ken Cameron at the Alberta Playwrights’ Network.

I wasn’t even sure what APN was, but after I met with Ken I sent a proposal for an as-of-yet unwritten play to Rona Waddington at Lunchbox Theatre and she commissioned the play in the fall of 2005. I wrote notes and outlines, but I didn’t actually write the play until February 2006 in another 24-hour playwriting competition, which is so well suited to me because I worked in television as a news editor. In television we don’t start cutting the news for the six o’clock show until around three in the afternoon. And then from three to six you hit the ground running, and it’s intense, and that’s the kind of scenario I love. So my writing is always last minute and rushed. I’ve tried to change that, but it’s just part of my process.

JAMES

So, was that the play that became the play being produced at Lunchbox this season?

DALE

Yes, this play has been in development since it was first commissioned in the fall of 2005 and written in February 2006. It’s taken twelve years to get to the stage. And some people think it’s autobiographical, but it’s actually not. There are elements of truth in it, and there are true stories in it.

JAMES

So, what you’ve done is taken personal experience as an inspiration and then created the play out of that. What are some of your thoughts about this twelve-year journey?

DALE

Well, when I started I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I’d never written a play before. But one thing that worked to my benefit as a playwright was my day job as a news editor. A news editor takes the raw material that a reporter shoots with her photog (cameraman) and helps it become a better product. And one of the things that entails is taking interviews that are five to twenty minutes long and pulling out 20-second sound bites. So in a sense – I’ve been working with dialogue for twenty-six years.

I’d also taken a writing workshop at the Banff Centre from Fred Wah about a form of Japanese poetry called Utanikki. In Utanikki you take two pieces of text and chop them up and then you put them back together in some form, and just by taking two completely different subjects – for example, a recipe for making scrambled eggs and a piece about coming out to your family and mashing them together a relationship is created between these two topics that didn’t previously exist. Many of my writings employ this method. Two types of writing blended together. I have poems where there’s haiku blended with free form.

Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer and Kelsey Verzotti as Jade in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets By Dale Lee Kwong – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

In the play I had this story about a lesbian and her girlfriend, and eventually they decide to move to Vancouver to get away from her family. But in between those scenes I had another entire play. It was a reality game show like Survivor where the lesbian girlfriend was being forced to come out to her family through a competition. There was a character like Jeff Probst, and there was this ancient Chinese sage character named Connie-fucius who would spout out fortune cookie lines.

Over the years I worked with a lot of different directors and dramaturges who encouraged me to remove the Survivor scenes from the play, but it was honestly my favourite part. I loved it! And I loved the character of Connie-fucius.

Lunchbox Theatre – The Early Days – Bow Valley Square

Rona Waddington never scheduled it for a production, and after she left Lunchbox I resubmitted it to Pamela Halstead when she was artistic director, and she was really interested in it, but by then she had already submitted her own resignation. So she set up a meeting between me and Glenda Stirling who was the incoming artistic director. Glenda had already programmed her first season, but she was interested in it for the following year, but then Glenda left. So I’d submitted the play to three different artistic directors and it had fallen through the cracks each time.

The other thing you need to know is that it’s been my goal to have a play at Lunchbox Theatre since 1978. I was in grade twelve when the Stage One program first started, and I don’t even know how I ended up going to all the Stage One readings but I did, and I made a mental note to myself that someday I would like to have a play at Lunchbox.

JAMES

But isn’t that fascinating – that there’s that connection from thirty years ago – no forty years ago.

DALE

78, 88, 98, 2008 – oh my God, forty years!

JAMES

Four decades.

DALE

That makes me tear up thinking about that. That’s why this play is so special to me. Lunchbox is my favourite theatre company, and I make no bones about saying that. I’ve been donating to them for years, and I’ve been volunteering there, and I think they’re one of the best treasures in Calgary.

JAMES

So what happened next?

DALE

After Glenda left, in comes Mark Bellamy. I knew Mark vaguely from Vertigo Theatre – and you’d think I’d show him my script right away, but I was gun shy having experienced several disappointments. So, I got to know Mark better, and he got to know me better, and I finally said to Mark, “You know, I’ve got this script that was workshopped here, and it kind of fell through the cracks.” He asked me what it was about and after I told him he said, “Send it to me.” So then I had this opportunity to send it to him, and do you think I sent it to him? No, because by that time it had been workshopped so much I didn’t know where I was at, and I thought I should get him a clean version. So, it took me a year to revise it and send it to him and he got back to me within a month, and gave me a workshop.

At the workshop Mark gave me the choice of a couple of directors and I chose Trevor Reuger from APN whom I had prior dealings with. He had helped me with another script I had started. I told Trevor my creative process and how I’m late with everything and not to worry because I was a news editor, and I’m used to tight deadlines, but before we started the workshop, Trevor suggested, that for the sake of time, we leave the Survivor bits out for now and he said, “If you can show me how they advance the storyline then we’ll start putting them back in.” I was sort of reluctant to do that.

JAMES

Sounds like a clever strategy from your dramaturge.

DALE

Yeah, so the first day we missed two Survivor scenes, and they were funny, and I was like – how can I justify getting them in?

JAMES

So, for the whole workshop you were trying to push them back in?

DALE

Well by Thursday I knew Survivor wasn’t coming back. The play had changed. Everything was fluid. I was doing rewrites every day. But there was this fight scene between Jade and her mother which I’d always struggled with because I didn’t have that fight with my mother in real life when I came out.

Ben Wong as Charlie, Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Kelsey Verzotti as Jade and Chantelle Han as Lilly in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

DALE

When I first came out it was in ’93, and I wrote the play twelve years later. I came out before Ellen Degeneres came out, and that was big news. She came out on the cover of TIME magazine. I came out to my family – all in one day – at my mom’s house. I told my cousins first, and at dinner I told everybody’s parents. The ones who had the most trouble with it were the cousins in the 50 to 70 year range, but everyone over 70 was fine with it. In my experience of coming out – senior citizens don’t care that much – you know – life’s too short – do what you want. I had one relative who was ecstatic to finally have a lesbian in the family – that was surprising too.

So, anyway, I had written the play forward to the fight scene and written the play backwards from the fight, but I couldn’t actually write the fight scene. There was just a blank page.

And we got to Friday, before the public reading, and we were reading the script, like we did every morning, and the actor basically went from the last line before the blank page to the first line after the blank page and I went, “No wait. There’s a fight scene there.” And they all went, “What?” And I said, “Well that’s what the blank space is.” And Trevor said, “Where are the words?”

And I said, “I was hoping we could workshop this and get something out.” And Trevor said, “Dale, there’s an audience coming in an hour and a half to see your play. You have to have some words there.” And I said, “Well yeah, but I’ve struggled all the way forward and all the way back – I just need some help.”

Finally Chantelle Han who was playing the mother said, “I think I would ask them to leave, but I need to say something first.” Then the actor playing Jennifer or Jade said, “Well maybe such and such could happen.” And that gave me a little bit. And I think we all worked it out together. I was scratching out lines and adding lines and telling them things. I have no idea what that page looked like on their scripts, and when they actually read it at the reading it wasn’t typed. It was just hand written notes. That script literally got written an hour before it was read.

JAMES

But the audience didn’t know that, and I saw that reading, and it was a lot of fun. There were a lot of laughs. People loved the play, and I remember mentioning to you how much clarity had come into the play from when I had read it probably a year and a half to two years before that if not more. So now that the play is being produced are you excited about going into the rehearsal process?

DALE

Even though I’m not as much of a green horn as I was twelve years ago I’m still a newbie. This is my first big production. So, there’s a bit of a learning curve, but I’m really lucky because one of my mentors in the theatre community is Sharon Pollock whom I’ve known since 2006, and over the last few years we’ve become really good friends because we walk our dogs together.

Rehearsal for Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets — Jamie Matchullis, Kelsey Verzotti, Ben Wong, and Chantelle Han rehearse a scene from Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

Sharon is wonderful. Last year she had her own new play Blow Wind High Water at Theatre Calgary and she had a revision happening on another play at Stratford and I was going through stuff on my end and so I could ask her questions like, “Should I go to the rehearsals?” And Sharon was the first to say, “It’s your right to go to the rehearsal. Not all playwrights do. In fact, most directors would probably discourage it, but you’re emerging – you’re a rookie – you should go to them all.” She said, “Just take a book, and be there if they need you, and listen once in a while, and see what things they struggle with, and you’ll learn.”

You know I always say to emerging artists, particularly artists in their 20s, I say, “You have age on your side. You can plead complete ignorance. You can say, I don’t know. I’ve never been to a dress rehearsal? Can I come to your dress rehearsal? I’ve never been to a first read. Can I come to your first read?”

DALE

The other thing you can do if you’re an emerging writer or artist is volunteer. I have been ushering at Calgary theatres for more than ten years. Almost every theatre company in the city uses ushers, and if you usher you get to see the play for free, and you meet the people behind the scenes. So there are all these people that I’ve met along the way, and I’ve been supporting them for ten years, and I finally have something they can come to.

JAMES

And genuine friends are happy for you.

DALE

Yes, I get that. I feel the love. At the official season announcement last February I just burst into tears. My best friend got a picture of it, and it’s one of my favourite pictures. Like you say it was a forty year journey. I didn’t even do the math. I’m bad at math. I’m not a good Asian.

JAMES

You can say that joke, I can’t.

DALE

You can credit it to me.

***

Dale also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the many people who have contributed to the development of her play over the years. Here is a list of the actors, directors, and dramaturges who have offered their time, talent and support in the creation of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets.

Lunchbox Theatre – Stage One workshop, May 2006

TV Host/Charlie Wong – Steve Gin
Lillian Wong/Connie-fucius – Jacey Ma
Jade Wong – Elyn Quan
Jennifer Smith – Karen Johnson Diamond
Dramaturg/Director – Ken Cameron

Alberta Playwrights’ Network – Writing in the Works excerpt, Oct 2006

TV Host – Grant Lunnenburg
Lillian Wong/Connie-fucius – Sharon Pollock
Jade Wong – Laura Parken
Jennifer Smith – Francine Wong
Director – Sharon Pollock

Alberta Playwrights’ Network – Discovery Prize workshop and reading, Nov 2006

TV Host/Charlie Wong – Steve Gin
Lillian Wong/Connie-fucius – Michelle Wong
Jade Wong – Francine Wong
Jennifer Smith – Nicole Zylstra
TV Host/Stage Manager – Patrick MacEachern
Dramaturg/Director – Brenda Finley

filling Station Magazine – flywheel reading for Chinese New Year, Feb 2008

Charlie Wong– Ben Tsui
Lillian Wong– Jasmin Poon
Jade Wong – Francine Wong
Jennifer Smith – Elan Pratt
Connie-fucius – Jade Cooper
TV Host – Emiko Muraki
Director – Dale Lee Kwong

Lunchbox Theatre – Stage One workshop, June 2016

Charlie Wong – Mike Tan
Lillian Wong – Chantelle Han
Jade Wong – Ali DeRegt
Jennifer Smith – Julie Orton
Dramaturg/Director – Trevor Rueger

Poster for Ai Yay! Sweet and Sour Secrets at Lunchbox Theatre

Dale Lee Kwong writes poetry, plays, and creative non-fiction. Third-generation Chinese-Canadian, her work explores Chinese-Canadian history, diversity & inclusion, adoption, and LGBTQ issues. Dale is passionate about the importance of Chinatowns across North America, and the fight to save them from gentrification. Dale plans to keep writing about the past and present, in hopes of shaping the future!

Lunchbox Theatre is one of the most successful noon-hour theatre companies in the world and produces one-act plays that provide patrons with an engaging and entertaining theatre experience. Lunchbox produces seven plays per season, as well as the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work where many of the plays produced by the company are developed. Lunchbox is one of Calgary’s longest-running professional theatre companies and is located in downtown Calgary at the base of the Calgary Tower.

Tung Bui is a Calgary photographer and videographer that is passionate about visual storytelling. He loves the challenge of trying to shoot outside the lines of the viewfinder. So if you’re looking to capture your memories in a unique way…let his imagination work for your vision.

This interview has been edited for length and condensed for clarity.

DOWNLOAD: James Hutchison Interviews Playwright Dale Lee Kwong – Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

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