Lunchbox Theatre Archives - James Hutchison

Interview Bronwyn Steinberg – Artistic Director Lunchbox Theatre

Posted on September 14, 2023October 20, 2023 by James Hutchison

Bronwyn Steinberg Artistic Director of Lunchbox Theatre – Photo by David Leyes

Bronwyn Steinberg the Artistic Director of Lunchbox Theatre is a passionate community builder focused on making theatre an inclusive gathering space where stories are shared that celebrate the diversity of human experience.

“The thing is humans are storytellers and stories are the best way I know to help people understand different people’s perspectives, and if you do understand different perspectives that will – at least in my dreams and in my hopes – help lead to more equity and egalitarian workings in the world and something that is less dominated by money and power.”

I sat down with Bronwyn a few weeks ago to talk with her about Bertolt Brecht, the exciting new season at Lunchbox, and her passion for theatre.

JAMES HUTCHISON

Since you were six years of age, you’ve been sitting in on rehearsals because your mother was a drama teacher at the time and she’s now a professor at the University of Calgary. Tell me a little bit about growing up in the rehearsal hall, and how you think that relates to your life’s path.

BRONWYN STEINBERG

Some of my earliest memories are of going with my mom to the rehearsal hall, and I remember she was directing Grease, the musical. And she was very serious about her rehearsal hall. The kids had to be in character all the time. Even if they weren’t on stage. And I just thought it was fun. I just thought it was normal that you grew up and you did plays. And it wasn’t just seeing my mom in rehearsal. She also took me to plays my whole life, and as soon as I had opportunities to do after-school plays I always did them, and so the magic of theatre was always there, and I got to see so many shows, and I just always knew it was something I wanted to do.

The Great Canadian Theatre Company’s 2018 production of Drowning Girls. Directed by Bronwyn Steinberg.
The Great Canadian Theatre Company’s 2018 production of Drowning Girls. Directed by Bronwyn Steinberg.
Bronwyn Steinberg embarking on a life in the theatre.
Bronwyn Steinberg rehearsing Pirate Jenny’s Circus for the 2009 Ottawa Fringe. Devised creation based on the works of Bertolt Brecht.
Bronwyn Steinberg rehearsing Pirate Jenny’s Circus for the 2009 Ottawa Fringe. Devised creation based on the works of Bertolt Brecht.
Breath of Kings: Rebellion at Stratford. Directed by Weyni Mengesha with Assistant Director Bronwyn Steinberg

JAMES

Would you attribute any of your style of directing to having spent those early years watching your mother direct?

BRONWYN

I don’t know if I can pinpoint anything. I have certainly learned a lot from my mom both from just watching the way that she works and the way she is in the world and the way she is as my mom because she’s an incredibly powerful personality and super smart and very strong. I’ve learned how to step into a leadership role when needed, but also I’ve learned how to let someone else lead. And I think that serves me as a director. So, when I need to really take charge in the room I can, but I’m also really good at stepping back and empowering other folks to also have leadership within the space.

JAMES

I was doing some research and I came across a couple of past interviews where you mentioned you studied Bertolt Brecht.¹ Brecht was an innovative voice in the theatre, and he was very unconventional in his thinking and approach. He believed theatre should challenge an audience and their view of the world not simply be entertainment. So, what is it about Brecht’s approach to theatre that you find exciting, and what influence has it had on your own work?

BRONWYN

It comes back to my folks and my background and who I am in the world, thanks to my family. My parents Shirley and Joe were always very politically engaged and very much on the left end of the spectrum. And their approach to education was deeply influenced by Paulo Freire² and critical pedagogy. I am not a Freire scholar, nor would I call myself a Brecht scholar either but what’s interesting is both Freire and Brecht are coming out of similar times even though they are in very different places in the world. They’re coming out of a need to speak against powerful regimes and speak up for the common person. And there was always a feeling observing my parents growing up that felt like whatever I did, whether it was in theatre or otherwise, I had to have a sense of social justice and doing good in the world, and speaking up for people or finding a way to help empower people whose voices haven’t been heard.

And so, when I started learning about Brecht, I found he was one of those theatre creators who took a political philosophy that kind of inherently made sense to me and figured out a way to play with it on stage in his practice. The thing is humans are storytellers and stories are the best way I know to help people understand different people’s perspectives, and if you do understand different perspectives that will – at least in my dreams and in my hopes – help lead to more equity and egalitarian workings in the world and something that is less dominated by money and power.

“LCT 2018 group” – photo by Joan Marcus - Lincoln Center — Lincoln Centre Theatre 2018 Directors Lab. Photograph Joan Marcus

JAMES

So, you’ve gotten experience early in your career at the Lincoln Center in New York and at the Stratford Festival here in Canada. I’m wondering how those particular experiences were a value to both your artistic practice and the development of your career.

BRONWYN

The Lincoln Center was an opportunity to be part of the Directors Lab, so it wasn’t part of their regular programming. I didn’t work on any shows but for three weeks in two summers, I got to be part of a seventy-person lab of people from all over the world talking about directing and engaging with ideas about why we make theatre and how we do it. There was about a third from the New York region and then another third from across the US and then the other third was from all over the world. And at Lincoln Center and at Stratford part of what was so important to my development, both as an artist and within the structure of my career was meeting people. It’s all about the people you meet and the different ideas that are sparked in random conversations over lunch or sitting under a tree or in the rehearsal hall.

It was really powerful for me to learn at Stratford that yes, I was surrounded by some of Canada’s most talented and experienced theatre artists, but they’re also humans and everybody making a play kind of does some of the same things. We all go into rehearsal and put a thing on stage, and we speak the same language even though our approaches are really different. But we’re all just trying to tell a good story and reach an audience and make it clear and make it compelling and make it entertaining and make it meaningful. And both of those experiences, I think, really helped me accept myself as an artist.

Stratford Langhamites – a group photo of participants from the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction after a masterclass with Mary Zimmerman

JAMES

You lived in Ottawa for twelve years. You got your MFA there and you made it home and you became a vital part of the local arts community. In 2013, you formed Theater Artists Cooperative: the Independent Collective Series, which is known by its acronym TACTICS.

TACTICS was designed to give independent artists an opportunity to stage larger-scale works beyond the production limitations of things like the Fringe and to let artists have larger casts and more sophisticated design elements.

And now we’re ten years later; TACTICS has been a huge success. You’ve staged multiple shows. You have a main stage series as well as a number of play development opportunities and though you are no longer in Ottawa as the artistic producer, you are still on the board.

So big congratulations. You started something and not everything that people start succeeds, you succeeded, and it must have taken a lot of drive, determination, and long hours. What was the process like? How did you stay motivated? And what sort of future do you envision for the festival?

BRONWYN

I’m really delighted that I was able to create something that didn’t just end when I left, which is so often what happens to a passion project, and it doesn’t mean the passion project isn’t valuable. It just means that it’s hard to sustain. And so, I’m really glad to see that the Ottawa community has embraced TACTICS and felt like it’s really a necessary thing.

Back in the beginning, I was slow to incorporate the organization. Slow to bring on a board of directors and slow to try to switch from project funding to operating funding because one of the things I really wanted to be sure of was, does Ottawa even need this? Or does Bronwyn need this?

And it was clear that I felt I needed something. I knew I wanted to be an artistic director and I didn’t know how to get a company to take me seriously if I didn’t have any experience. So, I thought, “Well, I’ll create something and be the artistic director of it, and I’ll learn a bunch and that will be a great stepping stone in my career, and hopefully it will make a contribution to the community.” But I wanted to see what contribution it was making in the community before I tried to put all the things in place so that it could sustain a transition.

And it was always a labour of love and always a passion project and I don’t ever want to try to consider how many hours I put into it and what money I actually got paid out of it because there was a lot of unpaid labour as I was building it. That’s not necessarily a good model to start an organization, but that’s the world we live in. If you’re some sort of entrepreneur, you kind of have to build it and hope that they come and then pass it on to new leadership.

I’m so deeply proud of it, and I’m so excited about the new leadership and the growth that is continuing to happen there. Micah Jondel DeShazer is now the Artistic Director, and Lydia Talajic is the General Manager. They’re the staff and now they actually do get to invoice all the hours that they work and have a salary.

TACTICS 2019 – Swedish Furniture by Matt Hertendy
TACTICS 2017 – girls! girls! girls! by Greg MacArthur, produced by Cart Before the Horse
TACTICS 2019 – Albumen by Mishka Lavigne
TACTICS 2018 workshop of Mad Margaret adapted by Bronwyn Steinberg from Shakespeare’s history plays
TACTICS 2019 – The Omnibus Bill by Darrah Teitel, directed by Esther Jun. Behind the Scenes.
TACTICS 2017 – The Hottentot Venus Untold by Jacqui du Toit

JAMES

You did an interview a couple of years ago where you said, Lunchbox is the right job of all the artistic director jobs you’d applied for. You said, “It’s the best fit, but it is also the best timing.” So, what made it the best fit? Why was it the best timing? And now that you’ve been in the job for a couple of years, how is it working out?

BRONWYN

I love Ottawa, but it’s a smaller city and I was ready for new opportunities. So, the timing was really good because we had incorporated TACTICS and had already started to think about a succession plan. But it was also late 2020 and my independent artist career was kind of like staring into a terrifying void like so many of us because everything had been cancelled. And I thought, “Oh, my God. What am I even going to do?” And I felt like I’d won the lottery getting an actual salary and a job at a time when no one knew when theatres were going to open again.

And I also think everything kind of happens for a reason because I did end up at the right place. I think Lunchbox’s emphasis on new works and new Canadian works is really something that is just very beloved by me. With TACTICS I did a lot of new play development and a lot of working with emerging artists. And Lunchbox has quite a history of being a place where emerging artists get their first professional gig or where more established artists get to try something new and actors get to become directors and a lot of what I was doing at TACTICS was creating opportunities for folks to work on a scale they hadn’t before.

And so, it just felt like such a natural fit in those ways. And the programming over the years has kind of a tradition of it’s at lunchtime and you want to have a good time at the theatre. And as much as I talk about socially relevant and political and meaningful work, I still always want to have a good time at the theatre. And even if I am doing something that could have quite heavy themes, I want people to leave feeling uplifted, and as I looked at the history of Lunchbox shows I could see that type of programming. So artistically it felt like a really good fit as well.

Garret Smith and Barbara Gates Wilson in Cottagers and Indians at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Chris Enright, Trevor Schmidt and Jake Tcaczyk in Flora and Fawna Have Beaver Fever (and so does Fleurette!) at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Kim Kilpatrick and Ginger in Raising Stanley / Life with Tulia at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird
Raising Stanley / Life with Tulia by Kim Kilpatrick, Karen Bailey and Bronwyn Steinberg at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Jameela McNeil and Christopher Clare in Heaven at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Emily Dallas, Valerie Pearson, Eric Wigston, Sepidar Yeganeh Farid in Home for the Holidays at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
LBT Stage Two workshop of These Moments of Shine by Camille Pavlenko.
Tiffany Thomas and Anna Dalgleish in Countries Shaped Like Stars at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Maezy Reign and Robert Klein in Shark Bite at LBT. Photo Tim Nguyen.
Kit Benz, Ali DeRegt and Jamie Konchak in All I Want for Christmas at LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Kit Benz, Ali DeRegt and Jamie Konchak in All I Want for Christmas by LBT. Photo Benjamin Laird.
Lunchbox Theatre 2023/24 Season Graphics by Maezy Reign
Lunchbox Theatre 2023/24 Season Grapics by Maezy Reign
Lunchbox Theatre 2023/24 Season Graphics by Maezy Reign
Lunchbox Theatre 2023/24 Season Graphics by Maezy Reign

JAMES

Well, then why don’t we talk about how your current season of plays feeds into that and reflects Lunchbox in the Calgary theatre community and maybe in the Canadian theatre community?

BRONWYN

I don’t usually think of programming around a theme, but as I look at these four pieces, I have realized that all four of them depict moments in people’s lives where another person really changes who they are and changes who they are in the world, which is I hope what theatre does for everyone.

In The Dark Lady there’s this imagined relationship between William Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano that if it happened, it actually transformed the world for all of us because it transformed Shakespearean literature. With Bells On is about this unlikely pair that gets stuck in an elevator together, and it totally opens each of their eyes to different experiences of the world. Kisapmata is a beautiful love story between a visitor to Canada and a Canadian resident who is part of her diaspora. And then The Ballad of Georges Boivin is about this guy who after his wife of fifty years dies decides to go on a road trip from Quebec to Vancouver with his friends to see if his first love is still in Vancouver. He’s not trying to get back together with her he just wants to know if someone who meant something to him fifty years ago is still there.

When I look at these four plays, they really go together in that theme while also being wildly different styles and different kinds of playwrights. Kisapmata is a new play by emerging Calgary artist Bianca Miranda, so it’s very local. With Bells On was developed at Lunchbox about ten or fifteen years ago by Darrin Hagen. The Ballad of Georges Boivin is a translation from Quebec playwright Martin Bellemare. And The Dark Lady by Jessica B. Hill just premiered this summer at Shakespeare in the Ruins in Winnipeg and at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. So, this season is a neat mix of things from – right here, right now; right here, ten years ago; and from other places across the country.

JAMES

In a time of infinite entertainment, we have YouTube, TikTok streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. There are all sorts of amazing shows out there, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Flea Bag, and The Good Place. There are interactive games – Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us and The Last of Us crossed over and made an amazing mini-series. And you still find good old-fashioned radio, books, and music. So, where in this massive, modern, mix of art, storytelling, and entertainment do you think theatre fits. What does it offer that makes it unique or special?

BRONWYN

I think it offers what it always offered, which is a chance to be in community while you hear a story. And I think that all the amazing entertainment that is out there and the different media that is out there is really exciting. I love it. I consume all kinds of different things as a watcher and sometimes player but that doesn’t replace the need to actually share in the live theatrical experience. It’s similar to watching the game on TV or going to the game. Going to the concert or listening to the recording. Even going to the movies versus watching it at home on Netflix. Humans are social and we understand something differently when we do it with other people.

This amazing thing always happens when the first audience arrives for a show. Suddenly as a director I see the play differently. The whole time I have been rehearsing the show I’m trying to think what will audiences not understand? What will they find funny. And all that stuff? And then when I have someone sitting next to me, and they don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to laugh. They don’t have to ask me a question. They don’t have to give me feedback. The fact of them sitting there while we watch the same thing together in the room – boom – makes me see it differently. The way we observe something is different in company.

And I think that theatre will always have an important place in our storytelling and in that human need for storytelling because of what it offers by doing it live. You feel it as an audience member and you certainly feel it as a performer or theatre maker and it’s like, okay, we have this moment together. We’re here. You’re watching me. I am watching you and we are sharing in this creation of this idea about this story or character. And it is something we do together.

Maezy Reign and Robert Klein in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry, directed by Chantelle Han. Set and Costumes by Bianca Guimarães, Sound by Kathryn Smith, Lighting by Ajay Bodoni. Photograph by Tim Nguyen.

JAMES

I noticed when I was doing some research for this interview that back in 2012 you did a production of The Hobbit at a prison. The only reason I mentioned it is because some years ago, I had an adaptation of my version of A Christmas Carol produced at a prison down in the US and I wrote a blog post about it. What was it like to do that show?

BRONWYN

Getting to do that show in the prison was a really special experience. It really taught me a lot about how important what we do is and how transformative it can be for people. And I got to attend a really neat conference presentation about prison theatre at an international theatre conference and they do a lot of theatre in prison in Italy. And it was an Italian director talking about it and everything he presented was amazing to me, but also completely unsurprising after my experience. They have found that in their prisons before the theatre program it was 60% of people that would re-offend or something like that and with inmates that had gone through their theatre program the rate was 6% and it was like this wild reduction.³

There is something really powerful about being a part of something like a theatre experience. It takes a person completely out of their day-to-day in the prison and gets them to be part of serving a greater purpose, which is the story and offering it to someone else, which is the audience. And I think we don’t realize how important it is for people to feel valued in the world and that they matter, and theatre is such a simple way to do that and it’s incredibly powerful. And actually, A Christmas Carol is kind of a great parallel because I think so much of Scrooge’s journey parallels what the guys that I worked with in prison were learning about being a part of something bigger and being a part of society in a way that a lot of them were never told they could.

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To purchase individual tickets to any Lunchbox show or play passes for the season visit the Lunchbox Theatre Box Office online or call 403-221-3708.

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¹ Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. He developed the theory and practice of Epic Theatre. Epic Theatre proposes that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her. Instead, theatre should provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage. Brecht wanted audiences to have a critical perspective in order for them to recognize social injustice and exploitation and to be moved in order to go from the theatre and effect change in the outside world.

² Paulo Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy insists that issues of social justice and democracy are not distinct from acts of teaching and learning. The goal of critical pedagogy is emancipation from oppression through an awakening of the critical consciousness. When achieved, critical consciousness encourages individuals to effect change in their world through social critique and political action in order to self-actualize. His influential work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement.

³ In Italy prisons, conditions are poor, but theater is thriving – By Tom Kington, Los Angeles Times – “On average, 65% of Italian prisoners go back to committing crimes after their release, but for those who have acted in jail, it’s nearly zero.”

Interview with Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry

Posted on May 10, 2022September 3, 2023 by James Hutchison

Photograph of Meredith Taylor-Parry — Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry

“I believe we move in the direction that lights us up. That captures our attention. That we feel passionate about. But my end destination keeps changing and what makes me happy keeps changing. I thought when I started all of this, I wanted to be an actress. I didn’t know I was going to be a playwright. And I like playwriting a whole hell of a lot better. It’s really about trusting the path and letting go of the outcome because how can you really foresee where the path will take you? If someone comes along and mentors you they can only tell you what path they took. But that’s not you. That’s not your path. I used to feel like a failed actress but if I had taken different steps along the way, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up loving playwriting so much or being as happy as I am being a playwright.”

Meredith Taylor-Parry
Playwright

Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry whose previous plays Book Club and Book Club II: The Next Chapter were big hits for Lunchbox Theatre has a new play at Lunchbox premiering on May 10th called Shark Bite. The two Book Club plays focused primarily on the challenges and joys of motherhood and marriage while her new play turns its attention to the relationship between a grandfather and his troubled fourteen-year-old granddaughter Ava as the two struggle to find the love and connection they once shared when Ava was a child.

I first met Meredith back in 2011 at Playworks Ink a theatre conference focusing on playwriting run by the Alberta Playwrights Network and Theatre Alberta. At that time Meredith was just beginning her playwriting journey and she was in the early stages of working on her play Survival Skills which won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off-Off-Broadway in April 2014 by the 13^th Street Repertory Company in New York City.

Meredith is a gifted playwright who is as adept at comedy as she is at drama, and her newest play is a touching and heartfelt glimpse into the age-old challenges of family members trying to reach out across the generations. I contacted Meredith back in March to talk with her about Shark Bite, life-changing decisions, sources of creative energy, and playwriting.

JAMES

One of the things we experience both as an audience and as an artist is a divergence of opinion regarding the work we see and the work we create. And by that, I mean the same movie or book or painting can be praised as the most meaningful and deeply moving experience of someone’s life and someone else will not feel a thing. One person can love it. Another person can hate it. Do you have an explanation for that divergence of opinion in ourselves and in others, and what does that tell you about us as humans?

MEREDITH

I think to sum it up in one sentence – people are complicated. Think of how complicated we are in our personalities and our histories and our experience. So of course, one piece of art is going to mean something completely different to someone else, or they’re going to experience it in different ways. That being said, what I’ve always been told about writing was that the more specific you are to your own experience the more you’re going to relate to a wider group of people.

So instead of trying to figure out what your audience wants, go to the heart and truth of your own experience as much as you can, and you will reach more people. That’s how you find your people. Your audience. The people that want to listen to what you have to say and to what story you want to tell. Because if you’re authentic through your writing and tell your story and your truth, then you seem to reach those people out there who are listening for it. They want to hear it because they experienced something similar.

JAMES

Have you ever had a critical moment in your life where someone or something you’ve encountered has resulted in a decision that changed your life’s path?

MEREDITH

Absolutely. I just feel weird about getting into it because I’m going to get pretty personal but what the f*ck! So, I got involved with a guy who was married back on the East Coast and if you flipped open a sociology textbook you could find a paragraph with our pictures above because it was that typical.

“I’m not happy with my marriage. I’m so sad. And now that you’ve come along, I understand what real love is. Maybe I’m finally ready to leave my wife. But no, I made vows. But I’m so unhappy. And you’re so great and amazing. Let’s get an apartment together! No this is moving too fast for me, I need to think. Blah blah blah.”

And I’ve written about this. I’ve written about this a number of times. Trying to work it out. That’s when I first started writing. That’s what I was writing about. It finally came down to this very dramatic scene in a small rural town in Nova Scotia, where I was sitting in a car and all three characters were there. The mistress, the husband, and the wife and they were screaming at each other. And I thought, “Oh my God, this is a Women’s Television Network fucking movie. And I am part of it. I’ve let my life become this drama.” And it was so clear to me that if one person did not withdraw that this crazy dysfunctional silly drama would continue on for who knows how long. That’s a lot of energy and a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. And I didn’t want any part of that anymore and I wanted to step out of the drama.

So, I did. I went home. I talked to my wonderfully smart, kind, and very wise roomie at the time who was my best girlfriend. And she organized a girl’s camping weekend around the gorgeous Cabot Trail in Cape Breton with a few good friends. By the time we had finished that trip, I decided I was going to get in my car and drive across Canada, cause I love a good road trip, and figure my life out. Those women and that weekend changed my life. Never underestimate the power of the female friendship. So, within two weeks, I packed up all my stuff, dropped it off at my parents and started a road trip and ended up out here. That’s how I ended up in Calgary. So – life-changing.

If I hadn’t done that God knows I’d still be back in Nova Scotia. I never would have had a little look-see and gander around Canada and figured out where I wanted to be. I’m sure I never would have ended up in the arts. I never would have had enough guts to go and do my BFA and my MFA. There’s no way I would have ended up as a playwright.

JAMES

Last year I was reading a book called, I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reed. It was adapted into a movie on Netflix by Charlie Kaufman.

MEREDITH

Oh, Charlie Kaufman. I usually like his movies.

JAMES

It’s a really interesting movie. But in the book, there’s a line that goes, “Who we want to be doesn’t matter when there’s no way to get there.” And that really brought to mind the idea of guidance and mentorship in life for me. It’s like how do we figure out how to become the artist?

MEREDITH

I think our picture of who we want to be isn’t the destination. I believe that. When someone says I don’t know the path to get there it’s like – take a fucking step in the direction of where you think you want to go and then watch the magic happen. Because in my life, every time I’ve done a big bold move the universe has come in tenfold.

For example, you may ask how does an elementary school teacher manage to take a road trip across Canada with no job prospects and end up out in Calgary? It’s because within a week after I’d made that decision to leave, I had a big unexpected financial windfall.

I believe we move in the direction that lights us up. That captures our attention. That we feel passionate about. But my end destination keeps changing and what makes me happy keeps changing. I thought when I started all of this, I wanted to be an actress. I didn’t know I was going to be a playwright. And I like playwriting a whole hell of a lot better. It’s really about trusting the path and letting go of the outcome because how can you really foresee where the path will take you? If someone comes along and mentors you they can only tell you what path they took. But that’s not you. That’s not your path. I used to feel like a failed actress but if I had taken different steps along the way, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up loving playwriting so much or being as happy as I am being a playwright.

Photgraph of Book Club II: The Next Chapter by Meredith Taylor Parry — Anna Cummer, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley and Arielle Rombough in a scene from the Lunchbox Theatre production of Book Club II: The Next Chapter Photograph by Benjamin Laird

I remember making a decision when I was turning thirty. I already had two degrees. I had a Bachelor of Education and a Bachelor of Sociology. Should I go take a Bachelor of Fine Arts and spend all that money or should I go to SAIT and take the film and television course, which was notoriously hard to get into at the time, but it seemed more practical, because I thought, “Well, I could still be on camera. I’ll just be working in television. Maybe I’ll be hosting a show or maybe I’ll work in news.” And that seemed the more practical choice. And if you took a poll of all my friends, which I did, because I used to do that in order to try and make decisions, they all said, “Oh, SAIT. Doesn’t that sound more practical? It’s only two years. You’re not going to spend as much money. I can see you doing television or radio. You’ve always been interested in it.”

Maybe SAIT was more practical, but I went with my gut intuitive feeling that I would not be happy. I got accepted into SAIT. I probably got in because I was relaxed in the interview. I wasn’t hanging all my hopes and dreams on it. I got in, but then I phoned them up and I said, “You know what, I’m declining my seat because I’m going to go to the University of Calgary and I’m going to take my Bachelor of Fine Arts and Drama.” And the admissions person said, “Well, good luck to you.” He was nice. He was just kind of astounded because people wanted to get into the program so badly.

But I just had this epiphany moment and when I made that decision, I decided that from then on, I was going to make bold moves like that. I wasn’t going to do what culturally looked right or what my friends were telling me to do. I was going to go with my gut. And I feel like I’ve been rewarded. I feel very grateful for the life that I live now. I work hard to let go of the feeling that I’m a loser unless I’m a famous Canadian playwright or I’m making good money doing this. Which is so ridiculous because it’s such a crapshoot and there are so few people that are going to go into the arts and make money. Maybe it should just be enough that you’re happy with yourself and you’re happy with trying to get your work out into the world. Sometimes you do, and that should be sweet enough perhaps.

Meredith Taylor-Parry and her friends Tanis, Jenny, and Krista - Banff 2019 — “The Biotechs” Meredith, Tanis, Jenny, and Krista – Banff 2019

JAMES

You mentioned friends. Who do you have in your life that can be brutally honest with you and how brutally honest are you with yourself?

MEREDITH

I subscribe to the philosophy of less brutality and more gentleness. So, I have a really good group of girlfriends who are honest with me, but we’re all each other’s biggest fans and we’re all really gentle with each other. And as far as being honest with myself in a workshop situation, for example, where you bring your play in and you lay it out and all the actors read it, I invite honesty. I just keep assuring people that I want to know if there’s something that doesn’t feel right to them. And you will get a lot of different opinions because as we said before, people are complicated. People respond differently to art. One scene that someone might love and adore another person may think is completely unnecessary. One character that I’m in love with someone else might find creepy.

So, I let everybody know at the beginning I want their honest feedback and that has come with experience. I certainly wasn’t like that at the beginning of my career. Not at all. But now I can handle anything. Just give it to me straight. I will write everything down because I feel like I have a really good inner bullshit meter that will tell me one of two things. Either: “You know what, that comment doesn’t serve the play OR shit they’re right. I didn’t see it before but now that they’ve given me that feedback I have to go back and fix that part. Oh my God, that entire scene has to come out and I have to write something else. What am I going to do? How am I going to fix that?”

Occasionally, I just note a comment and wait for two other people to tell me the same thing then I’ll go back and have a look at it. But I still have the dial on the bullshit meter that says, “Thanks for your feedback!” while I’m thinking, “No way would I touch that. I don’t care if you think that character is creepy. You can not like that character and that’s fine, but I’m not going to change anything or take that
character out.”

Photograph of Book Club by Meredith Taylor Parry — Arielle Rombough, Kira Bradley, Anna Cummer, Kathryn Kerbes, and Cheryl Hutton in the 2016 Lunchbox Theatre Production of Book Club by Meredith Taylor Parry. Photograph by Meredith Taylor-Parry

JAMES

Let’s talk about creative energy. That’s been one of the challenges I’ve noticed over the last decade with my own writing because I’ve always thought of writing as something finite. In other words, something that gets used up in the day. It’s like a jug of wine, right? You drink as you write and by the end of the day the jug is empty, and you’ve used it all up. And if you use it up on other activities like blogging or writing commercials, which I used to do, there’s nothing left at the end of the day for your stories.

But just the last week I started to think about creative energy more like turning on a tap. In other words, it’s always available. It’s just you have to turn the tap on to use it. So, I could be at work and let’s say I’m a commercial writer, I turn it on. I create whatever I need to make a living. I turn it off when I head home. And then that night, I’ve got a two-hour block where I could turn the tap on again and do my own creative writing. How do you think of creative energy? The energy you use to create your art. Is it a finite thing to use up in a day? Is it a flowing thing? I’m just curious.

MEREDITH

There’s got to be something in the tap when you turn it on. You have to figure out how you replenish that supply or keep that supply flowing. And for me, it comes from other people. For example, my energy has completely changed since we started talking even though this morning, I had a bit of anxiety about doing the interview because I wanted to think carefully about my answers. But now that we’ve started talking about playwriting, I don’t give a shit because I get so excited and all the anxiety goes away. This crazy energy builds up in me and it’s fun because I love talking about writing and I love talking about plays and I love talking about making art.

And if you look at any of my plays they went from one level to a much higher level it was always because of an infusion of creativity from other artists offering their talent, ability, different points of view and brilliance to the project. For example, with Shark Bite Maezy Dennie, Robert Klein, Chantelle Han, and Ruby Dawn Eustaquio were a dream team. I keep getting dream teams at Lunchbox. Like the dream team I had for Book Club and Book Club II. It’s impossible to have all of that artistic talent in a room together and not get inspired. And I know that I need that. It’s just that sometimes I forget to seek that out. I’m pretty good at doing workshops if a workshop pops up from the Playwrights Guild of Canada or whatever. I will do a workshop because I know that I’m going to come out of that two-hour workshop and be full of creative energy, which is going to help my writing that day or the next day or in the weeks to come.

Meredith Taylor Parry with her mother Elizabeth Taylor and sister Emily taylor Smith in Budapest in 2019 — Meredith’s Mother Elizabeth Taylor, Meredith, and her sister Emily Taylor Smith on an Opera Tour in Budapest 2019

And I need to expose myself to other forms of art if I want to get creative energy to put into my own art. I need to visit art museums. I need to look at visual art. I need to listen to a lot of music and different kinds of music. I need to read fiction. I need to go to plays because that will replenish my creative energy. My mom and my sister and I would go on these amazing opera tours pre- Covid. There’s a company out of Ontario called ARIA tours and they handpick the wine that you’re going to drink in the two-star Michelin restaurant where you’re going to dine. And thanks to my Mom, I’ve gone to New York and Scandinavia and several different countries in Europe, and I’ve eaten great food and toured world-class art museums during the day and seen so much opera. I’m truly blessed to have been immersed in such amazing art experiences.

And getting outside. Walking or gardening or yard work. Even shovelling snow. You’re outside. You’re getting your vitamin D. You’re getting some fresh air. You’re doing something kind of mindless that you don’t need your brain for so your brain starts wandering and coming up with creative ideas or starts solving a problem in a play that you’re working on or comes up with an idea that you might use for a play.

All this stuff’s been said before though. I’m not making this up and you just have find what works for you. And those are the three things I can think of that work for me every time: being around creative people, experiencing art in other forms and going outside and walking or just moving your body in other ways like yard work.

JAMES

How has COVID made an impact on you over the last couple of years? How has it impacted you personally and professionally?

MEREDITH

It broke my stride as an artist, I think. It did a lot worse for a lot of other people, so I don’t mean to sound whiny, but I had just rented a desk at cSPACE in the sandbox which is a co-working space at the King Edward. And I would go in once a week dressed up for work with my lunch and my computer and sit at this desk with other people who were renting space. And there’s all this art in there already and a lot of nonprofits and a lot of arts companies and organizations. And I’d go and I’d sit down and work and in a few months I finished an adaptation I was working on. And then COVID hit, and I thought, “Well, I’m not going to go into work anymore.” And for a while they shut down completely. So, now I’m like, “Should I do that again?” It was productive at the time but right now for whatever reason, I’m not super motivated. I already feel really busy.

And the pandemic was the perfect storm for my teenagers and they both encountered a lot of mental health struggles that were worsened during the pandemic and came to light during the pandemic. So, we started a whole journey with both of my kids and that’s taken its toll. It’s been really hard on us as a family but we’re getting through it.

Summer 2021 – Greg, Leo, Noah, and Meredith – Dinosaur Provincial Park – Alberta, Canada

But it also gave me time to rest and say, “Okay, we’re in a pandemic right now. I’m going to support my kids with their mental health struggles and get my kids through grade nine or ten or whatever it was because they’re working from home and they’re going to need my support to get through it.” Neither of them was doing very well independently. They really needed support and help to get through the online learning. So, “I’m going to give myself a break as a writer and I’m not going to feel like I need to be writing every day right now.”

JAMES

You mentioned you have a production coming up with Lunchbox Theatre called Shark Bite. This is the third play of yours to grace the Lunchbox stage and here’s the description, Ava a troubled urban teenager goes to her grandfather’s remote cabin for a visit. The two soon learn that the easy days of their relationship are far behind them and when George tries to find some common ground between them through a hike in the woods, a dangerous turn of events leaves Ava in the position of trying to save them both.

First, I’m curious, Ava’s fourteen and I’m just wondering, what were you like when you were fourteen? What did you think about the world? What was your life like? What did you spend your time doing? And reflecting back now, how much of that fourteen-year-old version remains today and how much did you use it to create the character?

MEREDITH

Oh, God, that’s a tough one. That’s a big question. Okay, so the first part of the question was thinking about yourself at fourteen and I see myself as a gawky, gangly teenager. My nickname was String Bean. And I was a card-carrying perfectionist. I was working really hard in school to try and get good marks. I did extracurriculars. I did sports. Even when they made me miserable I still did them. And then I was looking at everybody else and going why can’t I just be normal like her? Or comparing myself to other people because there was always someone who was better on the basketball team than me and there was always someone who was getting higher marks than me and had a boyfriend when I didn’t. So those kinds of things. Feeling like there’s something wrong with me. That I’m out of place. That I don’t fit in with other people.

I did spend time out in the woods with my father because he was a big outdoorsman. So, the stuff about hiking through the woods in the play and the spruce gum and looking at animal tracks would have still been a part of my world a little bit at fourteen. I don’t know how old I was when I gave up snaring rabbits. When I finally went, “Oh my God this is horrible. And traumatic.” Little t. That was definitely still part of my world at that time.

But when I was writing the play, I also tried to look at it from the point of view of teenagers and I wrote an imagined character who wasn’t really one of my teenagers, but I was certainly drawing from some of their experiences. And then Maezy helped me too in that final workshop that we did in 2021 with Stage One. She helped me be more truthful and authentic. There’s pretty much no other place I’d rather be than sitting in a room with a bunch of actors, trying to make a play better, and then getting to see it. I’m grateful for all the people that I get to work with through Lunchbox and I’m grateful that I’m going to get to work with them again because it’s a pretty damn great place to work.

Maezy Dennie as Ava and Robert Klein as George in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Robert Klein as George in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Robert Klein as George and Maezy Dennie as Ava in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Robert Klein as George and Maezy Dennie as Ava in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Maezy Dennie as Ava and Robert Klein as George in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Maezy Dennie as Ava and Robert Klein as George in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Robert Klein as George and Maezy Dennie as Ava in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Robert Klein as George and Maezy Dennie as Ava in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Maezy Dennie as Ava and Robert Klein as George in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen
Maezy Dennie as Ava and Robert Klein as George in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Shark Bite by Meredith Taylor-Parry. Photo by Tim Nguyen

JAMES

One of the themes in the play is an examination of self-harm. And the play really made me think about our culture and the fundamental role punishment plays in our society. The desire to punish ourselves is a message that might find its roots in the very nature of our own culture. In other words, ideas like no pain, no gain and the need to make sacrifices in order to achieve something. So, I’m curious about your own thoughts and what you hope your play opens up in terms of a discussion about self-harm and punishment.

MEREDITH

Self-harm wasn’t originally in the play. I workshopped the play with the St. John Theatre Company just before the pandemic in the fall of 2019. Pamela Halstead was the dramaturge and I also worked with a lot of really talented playwrights in that little circle. We were all finalists in a playwriting competition that was put on by the St. John Theatre Company and in order to enter the competition you had to have ties to New Brunswick or New Brunswick roots. Which I do. I was born there.

And one amazing playwright in attendance in Saint John, John-Michel Cliche said that when he thought about the presence of the lighter in the play he immediately thought about self-harm, and I replied – “Wow.” Sometimes you put things in your play, and you know they’re really important, but you don’t know what the hell they’re in there for. And then someone like Jean-Michel comes along and says, “Well, what about this?” And that opened up the idea of self-harm and I started thinking about it, and then it came into my own life through what my teenagers have been experiencing over the past couple of years. And then it came into the lives of a lot of my parent-friends, who have teens, and you know, pandemic aside, just being a teenager in this age is really, really, really, hard. Right? In this age, of TikTok.

So, I believe there’s a reason why Jean-Michel turned to me and said, “I thought about self-harm when she took that lighter.” Coincidence? I’m not sure. I’m experiencing this with my kids and I know so many people who are experiencing this and this needs to be talked about because this is a big commonality among teenagers right now that’s not being talked about a lot. And there are parents from my generation who are going, “What the hell? I don’t get this. I don’t understand this at all.” So, I think it’s really good if we talk about it a bit and we get some more information out about it and it sparks conversation among audience members.

I also think it really illustrates the generation gap between Ava and George because he’s an even older generation because he’s the granddad and how does a teenager maintain a relationship with a grandparent? How did I maintain a relationship with my grandparents at that point? When you’re fourteen and vulnerable and going through stuff that you don’t want your grandparents to know about because they might not understand it or they might judge you for it, so you don’t really show them who you are. You just have this kind of superficial relationship. They just know that you do well at school and you like horses. You don’t talk to them about what’s really going on. I felt there needed to be issues that illustrate the characters struggling to connect while dealing with topics that the granddad doesn’t understand.

And I don’t know everything there is to know about self-harm but from what I’ve learned about self-harm, and from what people have told me – because I haven’t experienced it myself – is that it is different from punishment. My understanding of it is that you’re inflicting a physical pain to avoid or rescue you from or to stop a profound emotional pain that is being visited upon you, rather than it being a punishment. It’s more like an action to protect you from pain, or to take you out of a painful place that you’re in so that you can avoid experiencing emotional pain.

For more information about self-harm check out the links below:

JAMES

When you think about life how much do you think about the cycles we experience and the linear progression of time we experience because there are cycles and an individual cycle can be different. So, we have the seasons, and each season has similarities to previous seasons, but each season is also unique, right? This summer was hotter than last summer or whatever. And just as we experience cycles in life on an annual basis, we’re also on a linear track. We’re getting older each day. So, our time here diminishes. And when you look at life, how much do you think about the cycles of life and how much do you think of the linear progression of time?

MEREDITH

I think more about cycles. That’s how I mark time. I really love the change of seasons in our climate. I could never be a snowbird. I have friends who are retiring, and I look on Facebook and they’re like, “We’re snowbirds now and we’re going to go down and live in Florida.” My grandparents did that. And I think, “I couldn’t do that. I’d miss the change of seasons. It’s nice to take a break from winter and go away for a couple of weeks but I like that cycle.”

And every year it seems to light me up even more. I’ll be sitting at my window, and I look outside, and I see birds starting to come around because it’s starting to get a little bit milder and I’ve got bird feeders in the yard and I’m like a little kid, “Oh my God, I saw my first Robin.”

And as I get older that stuff becomes more important and interesting to me. I notice it more. I enjoy it more. I enjoy that spring cleanup and getting out when the earth is starting to soften up a little bit and then you go out and you work in the yard all day and you smell the dirt and the air starts to warm up a bit in the spring. And I love the fall equally with all the smells and sometimes that beautiful weather that keeps going into fall when the skies have never been bluer, and it’s really crisp in the morning. And I love the first snowfall of the year and so I think I focus more on cycles.

And I know there are cycles with parenting because parenting is tough. And it makes parenting a whole lot easier because when you’re in a really tough cycle, or a really tough phase it really helps to look at it and realize, “You know what, this isn’t going to last forever. And right now, it’s really, really tough. But in a few years, they’re going to be a grown-up and we’re going to be sitting down having a coffee together, or going to a movie, or going for lunch and everything is going to be okay.” And it’s really useful to remember that when you’re going through a difficult phase.

JAMES

This too will end.

MEREDITH

“This too shall pass.” My mother used to say that all the time and I honestly believe that. And maybe it sounds trite, but it helps me sometimes to say it to myself. When I’m in my own little mire of bad thoughts or bad times or bad luck. It can help me to say, “This too shall pass.” So, I think in cycles. Definitely cycles.

JAMES

Back in January 2016, we did an interview where you talked about your play Survival Skills which is a fictionalized story about a father committing suicide based on your own experience with your own father completing a suicide after he had received a terminal diagnosis, and in that interview, you said, “You want to write the kind of play where people are going to go home and talk about it, think about it and talk about themselves a little bit. You know, my God, if it got people to think about their own mortality a little bit, how could that be a bad thing? We all run around scared to talk about it, but we’re fascinated by it at the same time. The idea that we’re mortal, just to have that discussion opened up wouldn’t hurt.” So, I thought, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about mortality and the fact that we’re all at some point in the future going to die. Have your own thoughts on mortality evolved over the course of your life?

MEREDITH

I think they’ve evolved but I can’t really say I spend a ton of time thinking or talking about it either. You know, it’s funny, at that point in time, I was obviously thinking we need to talk about death. It needs to be in a play. But right now, I don’t have a lot of thoughts to share on the topic to tell you the honest truth. I still think what I said was valid and I like what I said.

JAMES

Maybe there are times in your life where you feel the need to discuss your mortality, and maybe there are other times you don’t.

MEREDITH

And maybe you could take out the word mortality and punch something else in there like self-harm or punishment or shame or any of the other things we’ve talked about. I mean isn’t that what one hopes a play does? When I wrote Book Club a lot of thought went into how many moms are experiencing the same things, and shame being one of them, for not being the best mother on the planet. A couple of my plays deal with that theme. But if we don’t talk about it and bring it out into the light, we’ll just go on pretending to the people around us that we’ve got it all under control. Perhaps when we open up and laugh about the things that make us feel ashamed as moms or just human beings and shine a little light on it, perhaps that is a little bit healing.

There’s a Brene Brown quote, and I have it on my mirror in my bathroom. “I think laughter between people is a holy form of connection, of communion. It’s the way you and I look at each other and without words, say, I get exactly what you’re saying.”

So, if you write a funny line in your play about something rather important and your whole audience is laughing about it, there’s a shared humanity in that. Perhaps the audience is thinking “I get it. I get what you’re saying. I’m with you.”

Besides the fact that everyone just laughed at something you wrote down and were fortunate enough to bring to actors and a director and the rest of your creative team and they’ve poured their creativity into it and together you’ve just made a big room of people laugh and walk out together feeling happy and connected.

I mean my God, what more could you ask for?

Link to Phantom of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet by James Hutchison

Samantha MacDonald: The Universe Provides

Posted on June 13, 2019September 2, 2023 by James Hutchison

“I guess the other thing that I love so much about our industry is the amazing people who have all, for better or for worse, made this decision to become a part of this crazy thing that we do. And they give their hearts, and their souls, and their blood, and their sweat, and their tears, and we all have our crazy stories about the crazy hours and the hard work and all of the things that go into making theatre, but at the end of the day we get each other, and we come together in this almost spiritual way and support each other and make something beautiful – and then it’s gone. It’s like poof, and it’s gone, and I just love that – I love the temporary nature of what we do. And sometimes it’s heartbreaking, but it’s a big part of what I love about theatre.”

Samantha MacDonald, Artistic Producer – Lunchbox Theatre

Samantha MacDonald has been a part of the Canadian theatre scene for thirty years and has spent a substantial part of that time as both a director and theatre administrator. She was the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Producer of Project X Theatre Productions in Kamloops BC from 2004 to 2010 and was the Artistic Producer of Theatre North West in Prince George BC from 2010 to 2014, and for the last five years she’s been a vital part of the Lunchbox Theatre team. MacDonald joined Lunchbox in 2014 as the Production and Operations Manager and then became the Associate Artistic Producer from 2015 to 2017 and for the last two years she’s been leading the company as the Artistic Producer.

In addition to her administrative and arts leadership work, she’s an accomplished director having directed several Shakespeare plays including, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Tempest, and Hamlet for Project X and more recently As You Like It for Shakespeare by the Bow. She’s also directed several contemporary plays including To Dream Again for Storybook Theatre and several productions for Lunchbox Theatre including the very touching and poignant Flight Risk by Meg Braem, the smart and complex In On It by Daniel MacIvor and the very funny and successful Guttenberg! The Musical! which was the final play in the 2018/19 Lunchbox Theatre season.

I sat down with Samantha to talk with her about her love of theatre, Lunchbox, and her plans for the future.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So, I’ve listened to and read other interviews with you and sometimes you’ll say, “Oh dear, I’ve gotten on my soapbox about theatre.” But I want to hear you on your soapbox. I want to hear what it is you love about theatre. What is it?

SAMANTHA MACDONALD

Oh God, how long do you have? (Laughs) There are a number of things, but I think the first thing I fell in love with about this medium and what we do is just telling a great story. It’s the opportunity to put a bunch of people together in a room and touch them emotionally and to allow them all to feel something and to connect to something in a way you can not do in any other medium. Live theatre is the one place where we all share something so visceral and engaging in one space and we all experience it together at the same time, and part of that experience is how we respond together in a dark space to whatever we’re watching. And I love that.

SAMANTHA

Two weekends ago I had the great pleasure of adjudicating the Provincial High School Drama Festival in Red Deer, and my partner in crime was designer Anton de Groot, and one of the things he talked a lot about in his adjudications was exactly that and how on stage you are able to do things that you can’t do on film in terms of engaging an audience. So, you can take a piece of fabric that was once a parachute and turn it into waves or into a mountain or whatever, and the audience goes with you on that journey, and I love how you can tell a story in such an incredible way that maybe you would never have imagined.

And I guess the other thing that I love so much about our industry is the amazing people who have all, for better or for worse, made this decision to become a part of this crazy thing that we do. And they give their hearts, and their souls, and their blood, and their sweat, and their tears, and we all have our crazy stories about the crazy hours and the hard work and all of the things that go into making theatre, but at the end of the day we get each other, and we come together in this almost spiritual way and support each other and make something beautiful – and then it’s gone. It’s like poof, and it’s gone, and I just love that – I love the temporary nature of what we do. And sometimes it’s heartbreaking, but it’s a big part of what I love about theatre.

Creator and performer Michelle Thrush in Inner Elder, co-presented with One Yellow Rabbit as a part of the High Performance Rodeo. Photo Credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

When did you decide to go into this profession?

SAMANTHA

When I was in elementary school I was an actor, and I’m not an actor now, and I never ever will be, but I was an actor in elementary school and I loved it. I loved being on stage. I was Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore. I was Tiny Tim in Christmas Carol. I did all these things and as I got a little older I used to see shows whether it was my sister in a high school production or whatever, and when I would watch theatre there was always this hole in my chest that I could never explain and that I never understood, but I would watch theatre, and I would just have this kind of pain.

After high school I decided I was going to be a corporate lawyer and work for Coca Cola, and because I’d worked on a couple of theatre productions in high school I took a technical theatre class my first year of college, and the second day of this class we went to the Sagebrush Theatre, which is where we would do most of our learning in Kamloops, and I walked into the theatre, and I stood on the stage, and that hole I had been feeling went fwump. And I went, “I’m never going to be a corporate lawyer.” (Laughs) And that was it. The joy of this medium just filled that empty space in me and I was in love. And you know, here we are thirty years later and I still love it. I still absolutely love it. And whatever that hole in me was it never reopened. It went away that day and it’s never come back.

First day of full costume for the 2010 Project X production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Director Samantha MacDonald and her assistant director dress up to show solidarity and support for the cast.

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about the unique story of Lunchbox because lunch-time theatre was a big thing in the seventies. I was doing a little research about it and I was reading that in London you could see great actors like Bob Hoskins on stage, and interestingly enough there does seem to be a bit of a resurgence of lunchtime theatre going on now, but a lot of the original theatres have disappeared. So, what do you think it is about Lunchbox – because Lunchbox has had good times and tough times and it’s still here – what do you think it is about this theatre company that has made it possible to last for forty-five years?

SAMANTHA

I think there are a few things. I think the organization has always been very good at listening to its audience, and I think we’ve done very well over that large span of time of making sure that we are growing and changing with what our audience needs and wants. And our audience as a result of that has trusted us, and so even when we offer them something that’s maybe a little more challenging or a little different than they’re used to they will go on that journey with us because they trust us and what we’re giving them.

Devon Dubnyk and Arielle Rombough in the 2018 Lunchbox Theatre production of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, adapted by Joe Landry. Photo credit: Benjamin Laird

SAMANTHA

And I think there’s something really lovely in terms of being able to come for an hour and eat your lunch and watch great entertainment and then go away again. You know it’s a great story, but it’s not a huge commitment, and I think that’s something – particularly in our day and age – that a bite-sized bit of theatre is a great way for people to connect. It’s also, if you’re new to theatre, a really nice way to check it out without a huge commitment.

JAMES

Looking at this last season what have been some of the highlights for you at Lunchbox?

SAMANTHA

One of the big highlights for us was the opportunity to premiere a brand-new musical which we commissioned from a young local playwright. Emily Dallas is incredibly talented and a lovely young woman and so to have an opportunity to say to her, “I want you to write a piece of theatre and these are the parameters I need you to write within,” and then for her to come back with a piece like Brave Girl, which was our Remembrance show was really exciting, and our hope is she’ll be able to take it and expand it beyond a one act.

Elinor Holt, Jessica Eckstadt, and Tara Jackson in the 2018 production of Brave Girl by Emily Dallas. Photo credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

How did you two connect?

SAMANTHA

I directed Emily in As You Like It for Shakespeare by the Bow a couple of summers ago, and for one of her audition pieces she sat down at the piano in the Theatre Calgary rehearsal hall and played this beautiful song she’d written about a young person’s struggle in high school and about being your own hero. And by the end of the song, both Susan McNair Reid and I were in tears and then having worked with her all summer long I had a strong sense of both her ideals as a theatre creator and also her talents as an artist. I mean, I would say I took a risk, but it wasn’t really a risk, because I knew she would come up with the goods.

JAMES

Brave Girl is, as you mentioned, a one-act play and Lunchbox does one-act plays. What is it you’re looking for when you select a one-act play for your season? What jumps out at you?

SAMANTHA

It has to have heart. The content and story arch can be about anything, but at the end of the day what we know is that our audiences really connect with and are engaged with stories that have heart. And by that I mean it has to be a piece that connects to our audience in a positive emotional way so whether it’s something that affirms their beliefs, or something that reminds them that there is good in the world, or something that takes them on a journey – at the end of their sixty minutes with us – even if it’s a dark piece – even if it’s a piece that takes them to a place that’s more challenging – it still, at the end of the day, leaves them feeling better off than they did when they arrived.

So, for example, I directed In on It by Daniel MacIvor which was a challenging piece for our audience because it was nonlinear, and it was darker, and there was a character who died in it, and it was about dealing with grief and death, but I think our audience really liked being engaged in those ways. And in Brave Girl there’s the story of these two sisters and their struggles and how it tears them apart, and then of course at the end it puts them back together again, and it’s also the story of the mother who loses her spouse, and then she watches this rift develop between her two children, and it’s her journey as well, and so Brave Girl has lots and lots of heart in it.

Mark Bellamy and Stafford Perry in the 2016 Lunchbox Theatre production of In On It by Daniel MacIvor. Photo Credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about the season coming up. I’m curious, as an artistic producer, how do you balance your artistic vision with the business realities of running a theatre?

SAMANTHA

Well I mean obviously, as you know, financially it’s always a huge challenge, so when I was programming the 18/19 season, which is just wrapping up, part of what I was really aware of was that we needed to try and find a way to balance things financially in order for us to survive. So part of that was bringing in some shows because they tend to cost a little less, but I was really adamant that moving forward we were going to find a way to get back to producing more local work and hiring more local artists for our 45th season.

And in terms of programming, I always listen to the kinds of things my audience is saying, and I’m always looking at the things that do well for us and what people are talking about. And I suspect over the years we’ve lessened the number of actors over the course of our season so for us a big show is six. It’s a Wonderful Life was a six-person show and that was massive for us, but we also knew that show would sell really well so at the end of the day it wasn’t a risk. People really love the Remembrance show and the Christmas show, and so it is a bit of a challenge in terms of continuing to find new works that fit into both of those two categories.

Selina Wong in the 2016 Lunchbox Theatre Production Lest We Forget, created by JP Thibodeau and Joe Slabe. Photo credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

You’re doing Last Christmas by Neil Fleming next year and I was wondering how you arrived at that play as the right choice for next season?

SAMANTHA

I was looking for a Christmas show, and I went back over our history, and we had decided as a team that for our 45th season we wanted to look back in order to look forward a little bit. So with the Remembrance show and the Christmas show we said, “Okay, let’s look back at some of the stuff we’ve done in the past.” And Last Christmas had gone through our Stage One Festival, and it had an original production that had done very well for us, and now here we are ten years later and I think it’s a relevant family story with heart.

JAMES

And it’s funny. Even though it deals with some very serious issues like cancer it’s actually very humourous.

SAMANTHA

It is yeah. And it has that family connection between grandkids and grandparents which I think is relevant, and that’s a connection we don’t see a lot on stage. So, it’s nice to have that multi-generational story. And then similarly we picked Flanders Fields for this year’s Remembrance show because it was our very first Remembrance show that we did and it did really well for us. It also came through Stage One and it has a very clear affiliation with us as an organization, and it’s another moment of looking back to look forward.

Miles Ringsred Riley and Karen Johnson-Diamond in the 2011 Lunchbox Theatre production of Last Christmas by Neil Flemming. Photo credit: Tim Nguyen

JAMES

You’ve also got a world premiere coming up called Old Man the Napi Project can you tell me a little bit about that?

SAMANTHA

Yes, and that won’t be the real title that’s just the working title. So, Justin Many Fingers and I connected about this time last year, and we started to talk about what we can do and one of the things we’re going to do is have an artist in residence program. So, the intention is to take an Indigenous artist and offer them the opportunity to devise a brand-new show under Justin’s mentorship under the auspices of Justin’s company and Making Treaty 7 with Lunchbox as the production side of things. And Justin has now chosen that artist and it’s going to be Zachary Running Coyote, and he will create a show. And the intention is to take the trickster character Napi from the Blackfoot and to look at the trickster character from a variety of different nations perspectives and legends. I’m super excited that it’s going to be Zach because he is a super talented young guy and just a lovely – lovely human and a great storyteller.

JAMES

You’re ending your season with Nashville Hurricane with Chase Padgett who came here a couple of years ago to do his Six Guitars show. And for anybody who hasn’t seen him, he is the most amazing talented performer you’re ever going to see. I even went up to the Fringe in Edmonton last summer just to see Six Guitars, so I’m thrilled to see him coming back to Lunchbox.

SAMANTHA

Our season catchphrase is Together. The whole season is really about togetherness and acceptance and it’s about being all in this together and from the first show to the last show in the season that’s the message. And so in that last moment in Nashville Hurricane where he talks about his epiphany and realizing that we’re all here together and we’re all a miracle – that was for me – a beautiful way to wrap up this season which is really an encapsulation of who we are as Lunchbox Theatre and who we want to be in our community so yeah, it was the perfect show.

JAMES

So, after five years at Lunchbox you’ve made a decision to say goodbye and when it was announced that you were leaving I had this little moment of, “Oh, no not again.” Because you’ve brought Lunchbox to such a good point, and it’s healthy, and the seasons are good and they’re entertaining, and I was like who are they going to get?

SAMANTHA

When I announced to my team that Shari Wattling was my replacement and they cheered I went, “Yeah, okay we’re good. I can leave you guys and you’re in good hands and you’re happy so that’s what matters to me.” And Shari is such a smart lady, and she has really great ideas about where Lunchbox is going, and she has a significant history with the company. Her first professional gig was here. She’s directed for us. She’s dramaturged for us. She’s acted on our stages a number of times, and she was in the office for a period of time, so she has a really good love and understanding of the organization, and I think that’s super important.

Shari Wattling – Incoming Artistic Producer Lunchbox Theatre – Photo credit: Trudie Lee

JAMES

So then, what brought you to this point in your life? Why did you make the decision to leave?

SAMANTHA

There are a couple of things. I should be super clear that I am not leaving Lunchbox. It has nothing to do with this organization. I love this company, and I love the work that we’re doing, and my team is amazing, and if it were ten years ago and I still had the energy and the space in my life that I had then – then I would stay.

But I have been running companies solo essentially for about seventeen years without a break, and I just turned forty-seven, and what I became very aware of in the last couple of years is – that as much as I love the work that we do and as much as I love this industry – my own well has begun to run dry, and I needed to take steps to do a little self-care to refill that well before I started getting bitter and before I started getting angry. Before I stop loving what I do.

And another part that plays into that is when I was twenty-two my mom died of cancer at forty-eight and as I approach that milestone I am aware that in her forty-eight years she lived a vast life, and she raised five children, and she volunteered and studied and had a very rich life. She was an exceptional human. And as I look at my own life in my forty-seven years I’m aware that there’s something a bit lacking for me, because all I’ve done is work and that’s meant the end of a marriage of fifteen years and a lot of stress. So, I made a commitment to myself that I’m going to do something different and see if I can figure out how to live a little bit of life for the next little while. So it’s not about leaving Lunchbox, or even necessarily leaving theatre, it’s about finding a way and a space for me to have a life with a capital L and to re-evaluate things and then move forward from there, and I don’t know what that will look like but that’s the plan. And I’ve been saying for years, “I’m going to get a life one of these days,” and I finally just went, “No I actually have to do something in order to make that happen. No one’s going to hand it to you.” And I always say the Universe provides, and it always has in my thirty years in this industry. I’ve never been without a job, and there are lots of opportunities sort of floating around out there, and I’m just waiting to see what the next thing is that the Universe offers.

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You can check out the entire 2019/20 Lunchbox Theatre season below. Individual tickets to Lunchbox shows are just $25.00 or save some money and purchase a play pass which gives you seven flexible admissions for the price of six. Complete season details and ticket information can be found at LunchboxTheatre.com.

Lunchbox Theatre 2019/20 Theatre Season

The Pink Unicorn
By Elise Forier Edie
September 14 to October 5

Some battles only a mother can fight. When Trisha Lee’s daughter announces that she is genderqueer, the small-town Texas widow’s world is upended. Suddenly at odds with her faith and her family, Trisha must struggle to understand and accept her daughter’s truth. Hilarious and heartfelt, The Pink Unicorn explores a mother’s boundless love for her child.

In Flanders Fields
By Rober Gontier & Nicky Phillips
October 19 to November 9

This stunning work was our inaugural Remembrance play in 2010, when it received a Betty Mitchell Award nomination for Outstanding Production of a Musical. Based on the extraordinary life of Lt.-Col John McCrae, In Flanders Fields sweeps from rural Ontario to the mud of the French trenches, revealing the brotherhood, love, and true humanity of one of Canada’s most famous poets.

Last Christmas
By Neil Flemming
November 23rd to December 21st

Last Christmas, Jake’s wife Marge was still alive and every ritual was observed. This year, between two feuding daughters and a delinquent grandson, Jake’s holidays will be anything but traditional. This heartwarming comedy offers a contemporary look at the joys and challenges of the season, and reminds us that family just might be the greatest gift of all.

Good Morning Viet Mom
Created and Performed by Franco Nguyen
January 11 to January 25

Filmmaker Franco Nguyen travels to Vietnam seeking inspiration for his first feature film and finds an unexpected subject – his mother. Good Morning, Viet Mom is a comedic and bittersweet gem from a first-generation Canadian raised by his single immigrant mother. Nguyen shares stories about childhood; his relationship with his mother; and their emotional trip to Vietnam.

Old Man: The NAPI PROJECT
A Partnership with Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society

The culmination of a co-operative Artist in Residence program with Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society, this project will explore the tradition of Trickster, and stories that examine our morals and the choices we face. The project will be an exploration of what this cultural character evokes and inspires in an Indigenous artist.

A Tender Thing
By Ben Power
March 21 to April 11

What if Romeo and Juliet had lived? This is the question Ben Power poses in this delicate and profound “remix” of the greatest love story ever told. The premise is simple – rather than taking their own lives, the young lovers have grown old together, their dazzling love undimmed, to endure a more commonplace tragedy. Shakespeare’s timeless poetry creates a new, deeply romantic and powerful play, and a strikingly different love story.

Nashville Hurricane
Written by Chase Padgett & Jay Hopkins
April 18 to May 09

Forty years ago a mysterious guitarist appeared from nowhere, conquered the music industry, and then vanished without a trace… until now.

Hot on the heels of his smash hit 6 Guitars, virtuoso actor and musician Chase Padgett becomes a manager, a mother, a mentor, and the guitar prodigy himself as each one tells their side of the rise, demise, and resurrection of the best damn guitar player you’ve never heard of: the Nashville Hurricane.

509
By Justin Many Fingers
October 3 to October 12
Season add on in Partnership with Making Treaty 7

Still in creation, 509 is an examination of a young man’s connection to his Blackfoot ancestors, a connection he only discovers as he lays dying. The show will be a dance theatre piece, mostly in the Blackfoot tongue. This piece is part of a triptych created by Justin Many Fingers, supported by Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society and Lunchbox Theatre. This show is an add on to the 2019/2020 season, presented at The GRAND Theatre.

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LUNCHBOX THEATRE: Lunchbox Theatre is one of the most successful noon hour theatre companies in the world. It aims to provide patrons with a unique theatre experience by producing one-act plays that engage and entertain audiences. Lunchbox Theatre produces six plays per season, as well as the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work and the RBC Emerging Director’s Program. It is one of Calgary’s longest-running professional theatre companies and is located in the heart of downtown at the base of the Calgary Tower.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview with Actor Braden Griffiths: 21st Annual Betty Mitchell Awards

Posted on June 20, 2018April 19, 2024 by James Hutchison

“We’re also a night where everybody in the theatre community comes together to celebrate the work which we’ve done throughout the year. And whether they’re nominated for a Betty or not – whether they win a Betty or not – we are all there to celebrate the outstanding work that has been done throughout the theatre season, because it’s a hard thing to create theatre. It’s a hard thing to create art. They are a celebration that we have a community and that we are a group of four hundred to five hundred people who have come together and decided that this is our life’s work – hence the professional thing – this is our life’s work, this is what I chose to do for a life and the gift of my art is something that has value.” – Braden Griffiths

Actor Braden Griffiths in Vertigo Production — Kathryn Kerbes as Mrs. Hudson, Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes and Curt McKinstry as Dr. Watson in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Sherlock Holmes and the American Problem by R. Hamilton Wright. Photo by Tim Nguyen

On Monday, June 25th the Calgary Theatre community came together to celebrate the Twenty-first annual Betty Mitchell Awards. I sat down with actor, playwright, and current President of the Betty Mitchell Board Braden Griffiths, who was just finishing his run as Sherlock Holmes in the Vertigo Theatre production of Sherlock Holmes and the American Problem, to talk about the awards and theatre in Calgary.

JAMES HUTCHISON

What is the purpose of the Bettys?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

The awards were started by Grant Linneberg , Johanne Deleeuw, Mark Bellamy, Donna Belleville and Doug McKeag those five, and Diane Goodman might have been there as well. One of them joined in the second year. They started it as a way to recognize the excellence that they saw happening in this community and as a way to earmark that excellence in a more official way so that the Calgary theatre community could be a bigger player in Canadian Theatre either by exporting that excellence or by becoming a destination for excellence to be imported into Calgary.

Kate Dion-Richard as Helen Schmuck, Gili Roskies as Marm (Margaret) Schmuck, Katie Ryerson as Hilda Ranscombe, and Morgan Yamada as Nellie Ranscombe in the Alberta Theatre Projects in Association with Western Canada Theatre production of GLORY by Tracey Power. Photo by Barbara Zimonick

JAMES

There’s a lot of recognition across the various companies in this year’s nominations.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

We’ve considered splitting the second-tier and the first-tier theatres into separate categories, but there is something beautiful about having smaller theatre companies like Handsome Alice nominated or Verb Theatre recognized in the best production category this year alongside the artistic output from larger theatre companies like Theatre Calgary and ATP because I think when we boil all this down, all we’re trying to do in theatre is illuminate something about this messy existence we lead as human beings. We’re trying to illuminate something about what it means to be human and that can happen anywhere and you can be affected just as profoundly in the Motel Theatre as you can in any of the big theatres in Calgary. And so, I love how the Bettys safeguard this idea that we are a community of artists, and we all have the same goals regardless of whether we are working at TC or whether we are working at Handsome Alice or Sage or one of the smaller companies in town. We all have this same goal to tell a story and hopefully illuminate something about what it means to be human.

Camille Pavlenko as Una and Curt McKinstry as Ray in Verb Theatre’s production of Blackbird by David Harrower. Photo by Rob Galbraith/Little Guy Media.

JAMES

What do you think the awards mean to the local theatre community?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

The value of a Betty, at this point I think, is a thumbs up that you’re creating something that did affect somebody in some way. And then beyond that we hope that a Betty Mitchell award matters on a grant proposal let’s say, or we hope that a Betty Mitchell award nomination might help somebody get into an audition room that maybe they weren’t able to get into before, or maybe it helps a playwright to get a commission. It gives that one little extra push to get that commission that maybe they wouldn’t have been considered for before.

And I don’t think the Bettys are the only benchmark we have for excellence in theatre in this community, because there are a lot of people who aren’t on that list who did outstanding work this year, but I think every artist wants to be recognized in some way for what they do as an artist, and this is a nice official way that you can do that and put it down on a ledger and say, I was nominated for a Betty.

Joel Cochrane as Don Pedro in The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions Production of Much Ado About Nothing – Photo by Tim Nguyen

JAMES

And it means something now because we’re twenty-one years in. So, there is a history and a legacy to the Bettys that didn’t exist that first year. And the nice thing is, it does offer a certain record to the performance history of Calgary.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Without a doubt. I was going through all the past nominations and there were productions in 1998 when I would have been in grade ten, I believe, and I can remember going to at least two productions that were nominated for Bettys on that list. And it was a bit of a time capsule for me, so the Bettys end up being a marking of our history. It’s saying, we were here. And there are people who are nominated whose names I don’t recognize, which is shocking to me, because we are a fairly small community, so I do wonder what happened to them, but that person was an important part of our theatre community at some point. And they made a difference

JAMES

They’re remembered, in a way. Their work is acknowledged. And that’s not insignificant.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

It’s not. There’s a tradition in masonry of masons – when they build a big building or whatever out of stone – they’ll leave a little card with their name on it and the year that the building was built, and that card may never be found but its a little statement of I was here. And if theatre is about building a bridge between the artist and the audience then these artists who were nominated for their work but might not be here anymore are still an important stone in the bridge that the Calgary theatre community has been building to the audience of Calgary.

The cast of Sage Theatre’s production of Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story by Natalie Meisner. Matt McKinney as Everett Klippert, Jenn Forgie as Tonya, Kathy Zaborsky as Maxine, and Mark Bellamy as Handsome. Photo by Jason Mehmel

JAMES

When the awards started in ninety-eight the world population was 5.9 billion. Jean Chrétien was Prime Minister. Bill Clinton was President. The Tony Award for best musical was The Lion King. And on September 4th, 1998 Google was founded. Here are the type of plays that Calgary was producing at the time. A Delicate Balance, Glengarry Glen Ross, Assassins, Fiddler on the Roof, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)…

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

…which I’ve done four times…

JAMES

…and A Christmas Carol.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

There you go.

JAMES

Let’s jump twenty-one years. The world population is now 7.6 billion. Almost two billion more in twenty-one years.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Holy moly.

JAMES

Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister. Donald Trump is President.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Oh, man.

JAMES

The Tony Award for best musical – just decided – The Bands Visit. Google’s Brand value is 120.9 billion. They’re behind Apple and Amazon. And so here are the plays we’re seeing this year. We saw The Humans, The Last Wife, Inner Elder, Much Ado About Nothing, Blackbird, The 39 Steps, and A Christmas Carol.

BRADEN (Laughs)

Christmas Carol, our one big constant.

Stephen Hair as Ebenezer Scrooge, Jamie Konchak as Mrs. Cratchit, Tia Rose Woodruff as Tiny Tim, Eleanor Braitenbach as Belinda Cratchit, Graham Percy as the Spirit of Christmas Present, Karl H. Sine as Bob Cratchit and Evan Andersen Sterns as Peter Cratchit in the Theatre Calgary Production of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Adapted for the Stage by Dennis Garnhum. Photo by Trudie Lee

JAMES

So, how do you think the plays we’re producing at a particular time reflect the times we live in?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

I’m always mystified by how Christmas Carol just sells out every year, but at its core, Christmas Carol, is a simple message about man’s ability to change and so there is still a desire for that simple hope. So, Christmas Carol or shows of that ilk and ilk sounds like a negative word but it’s not, I love Christmas Carol. I adore it. I wouldn’t have done it for seven years if I didn’t. But there is still a desire, and I think there always will be a desire, for that simple human message of hope. And yet theatre is starting to change. We are starting to be a more interactive society because of platforms like YouTube and Twitter where you can send a Tweet to Brad Pitt and he might respond to that Tweet.

Ron Pederson as Man 2, Tyrell Crews as Richard Hannay, Andy Curtis as Man 1, and Anna Cummer as Annabella/Margaret/Pamela in the Veritgo Theatre Production of The 39 Steps adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel by John Buchan from the movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Photo by Tim Nguyen

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

And so, there’s a desire for more interactivity in the art or the media that we indulge in. I think to a certain degree, the magic of a play like The 39 Steps is that we’re all in on the joke. That this is just two ladders and a bunch of crates on a stage and yet those things will become a plane chasing someone through a field, or the crates will become the boxcars in a train or whatever it is, and so we’re all in on the joke and so there’s a greater sense of interactivity. Which is why I think 39 Steps, even though it’s an old play now, has great relevance because the audience is involved in creating that joke.

And then you have things like Inner Elder by Michelle Thrush which talks about what it means to be a first nations member of the Canadian Zeitgeist. What it means socially to be a first nations member. And to actually hear that story told by the person who should be telling that story. The first nation’s experience is not my lived experience. Their lived experience informs my lived experience, and it may not shine the most desirable light on my lived experience, but I need to know as a person who’s a six-foot-tall white male, and I live with such great privilege that it’s insane, but that is my lived experience, and sometimes I can’t see it. And so, if theatre is holding a mirror up to nature then by watching Inner Elder I learn something about what it means to be Braden by watching and hearing the story of someone who is living with much, much, much, less privilege than I. And then hopefully, if I’m open to that…if my ears are open to that…and if the theatre companies are providing a platform for those stories to be told then I will become a more complete human, and a I will become a better community member, and by community, I mean the community of the world by understanding the stories of those who are around me and understanding something greater about myself.

Inner Elder created and performed by Michelle Thrush and presented by Lunchbox Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit as part of The High Performance Rodeo. Photo by Benjamin Laird.

JAMES

Well that’s what art does, doesn’t it? It makes us look in the mirror. It reflects who we are as a people, culture and society and it looks at both the good and the bad.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Hopefully. I was doing, Alls Well That Ends Well, with Peter Hinton at The Shakespeare Company two years ago, and this isn’t a name drop, I just want to give credit where credit is due. He said, at some point in that rehearsal process, “There’s not a lot of plays out there where two people sit on a bench both enjoying their own sandwiches, and then they go home. There’s a lot of plays out there where two people are sitting on a bench where one person has a sandwich and the other person is starving. There aren’t a lot of plays out there where we see mankind at peace. We’re always meeting these people in these stories at a time of crisis. At a life-defining moment.”

Elinor Holt as Deirdre Blake, Shekhar Paleja as Richard Saad, Lili Beadoin as Brigid Blake, Ric Reid as Erik Blake, and Ayla Stephen as Aimee Blake in the Theatre Calgary Production of The Humans by Stephen Karam. Photo by Trudie Lee

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

And I feel that’s a really apt quote because, speaking personally, I’ve always much preferred playing the very flawed individual, because we spend so much time in our lives hiding those flaws that we have from the rest of society because that’s the social agreement that we make. We all have our own shit and everybody’s life is complicated, but if you and I are not best friends we’re not going to throw our complications at the other person or that’s the hope of the social agreement we make every day.

And so, the flaws are where the real meat of storytelling and theatre happens. Sherlock Holmes, for example, who is a superhero in terms of his mental acuity is also a morphine addict and a cocaine addict. That I think is where theatre becomes accessible – it’s in the flaws. So, if theatre is holding a mirror up then we can see something of those things we are struggling with in these people on stage. Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes is not dealing with the same things that Sherlock Holmes is, but I become a conduit to talk about those flaws, and I think that’s why theatre is valuable, because it provides a safe space for us to look at the worst and then to ruminate on the worst and know that at the end of the night we’re all going to get in our car and we’ll all safely drive home.

JAMES

What are your ambitions for the Bettys?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

The board is always trying to safeguard the most unbiased process possible. That’s really what the guidelines are there for. So that we can award these 18 to 20 statues and it is representative of the twelve voices on the jury as opposed to one single voice. It’s a big thing to try and create a list of twelve that has a range of ages, that has a range of sexuality, and has a range of artistic niche. We try to have actors, directors, playwrights, educators, technicians and designers. We want that twelve ideally to be representative of the whole community so that it can be the most unbiased it possibly can be. That’s always going to be, for the board, at the top of the list.

Eric Wigston, Tenaj Williams, Madeleine Suddaby, and Selina Wong in Touch Me: Songs for a (Dis)connected Age by Forte Musical Theatre. Presented by Theatre Calgary. Photo by Trudie Lee

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

There’s also a responsibility for the Bettys to be as inclusive as possible as production models change and as the equity guidelines change to include different types of theatre being created. There are different contracting forms now that weren’t available seven or eight years ago where theatre companies can gather an ensemble of seven and create a show and be protected by equity and be considered a professional show. And so, there is a responsibility for the Bettys to foster a growth in the community by being as inclusive as possible so that those smaller companies that are trying to make their name in the theatre community are included within the professional theatre community. The more inclusive we can be, I think, the greater array of theatre production we’re going to see in this town.

A Chitenge Story created and performed by Makambe K. Simamba. A Handsome Alice Theatre Production. Photo by Tim Nguyen, Citrus Photography.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

We’re also a night where everybody in the theatre community comes together to celebrate the work which we’ve done throughout the year. And to a certain degree that is sacred as well, because as we’ve seen unofficial community meeting places like the Auburn disappear building that sense of community has become more difficult in some ways, and so the Bettys are a night that’s guaranteed to happen every year where two hundred or so of our theatre community will come together. And whether they’re nominated for a Betty or not – whether they win a Betty or not – we are all there to celebrate the outstanding work that has been done throughout the theatre season, because it’s a hard thing to create theatre. It’s a hard thing to create art. They are a celebration that we have a community and that we are a group of four hundred to five hundred people who have come together and decided that this is our life’s work – hence the professional thing – this is our life’s work, this is what I chose to do for a life and the gift of my art is something that has value.

Back Left to Right: Lee-Anne Galloway, Rachel Delduca, Bracken Burns as Elle Woods, Kyla Musselman, Laura Tremblay, Victoria Whistance-Smith Front Left to Right: Amber Bissonnette & Sash Striga in the Stage West Theatre production of Legally Blonde The Musical, Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe & Nell Benjamin, Book By Heather Hach based on the novel by Amanda Brown and the MGM Motion Picture. Photo by John Watson Photography

JAMES

That’s what the Bettys are doing for the artist but what about the Bettys in terms of their ability to be an ambassador to the city for our arts community.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Well, I don’t know that the community at large knows what the Bettys are. And I think the work of the Bettys in the future is, how can we as the awarding body in town support those producing companies in town over the course of the season as opposed to just on that one night? That’s a conversation that needs to happen between us and the producing companies.

Gregory Dahl as Scarpia and Ambur Braid as Tosca in the Calgary Opera production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. Photo by Trudie Lee.

JAMES

So, one of the challenges is how do we get new audiences in there. How do we foster that? How do we reach these people?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

I think people are more liable to go see themselves, and so I think part of the reason we see a lot of white middle-class, upper-middle-class human beings in theatres is partially because it requires a certain amount of disposable income to go to theatre and partially because those are the stories that for a very – very long time were being told. And so, when we talk about Inner Elder I think it’s more likely that someone of first nations decent might go and see Inner Elder because they see something very specifically that is their story being told in a theatre. And once somebody has seen something in a theatre that has affected them profoundly it’s far more likely that they’re going to go to the next show that may not tell a story that specifically speaks to their lived existence, but like I said earlier, me seeing Inner Elder speaks to my existence whether it speaks to it specifically or not. I think we need to do a better job of telling a wider array of stories in the theatre and if we’re producing Shakespeare we need to start casting artists that come from different lived experiences. And I think the fact that we’re seeing Michelle Thrush direct Honor Beat by Tara Beagan as the first show of the season at Theatre Calgary means we’re moving in the right direction, but we need to continue to do the hard work of providing those opportunities so that we can create a theatre community that is representative of the greater community and the Bettys is a part of that, I think.

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2018 Betty Mitchell Awards Nominees

Winners in Bold.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE

Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
The Humans – Theatre Calgary
inVISIBLE – Handsome Alice Theatre
Touch Me: Songs for a (Dis)connected Age – Forte Musical Theatre Guild, presented by Theatre Calgary
Undercover – Vertigo Theatre & Tarragon Theatre

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Kathryn Kerbes – Sherlock Holmes & the American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
Helen Knight – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
Chantelle Han – Ai Yah! Sweet & Sour Secrets – Lunchbox Theatre
Esther Purves- Smith – Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery – Stage West

OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN (Tie)

T. Erin Gruber – Easter Island – Verb Theatre
Jessie Paynter – Extremophiles – Downstage
Anton de Groot – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
Narda McCarroll – To the Light – Alberta Theatre Projects
Bonnie Beecher – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
David Fraser – Sherlock Holmes & the American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
Scott Reid – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
David Fraser – Constellations – Alberta Theatre Projects
Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett – Extremophiles – Downstage

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Trevor Rueger – Much Ado About Nothing – The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions
Mark Bellamy – Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story – Sage Theatre
Stafford Perry – The Lonely Diner – Vertigo Theatre
Kevin Rothery – Sherlock Holmes & The American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
Nathan Schmidt – Sherlock Holmes & The American Problem – Vertigo Theatre

OUTSTANDING PROJECTION OR VIDEO DESIGN

Jamie Nesbitt – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
Remy Siu – Empire of the Son – Alberta Theatre Projects, part of the 32nd Annual High Performance Rodeo, a Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre Production
T. Erin Gruber – Easter Island – Verb Theatre
Corwin Ferguson – Julius Caesar – The Shakespeare Company, Ground Zero Theatre, and Hit & Myth Productions
Amelia Scott – To the Light – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
Heather Moore – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
Cory Sincennes – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary
Cindy Wiebe – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
Mérédith Caron – Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN OR COMPOSITION

Steve Charles – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
Peter Moller – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
Andrew Blizzard – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
Andrew Blizzard – Sherlock Holmes & The American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
Bryce Kulak – To The Light – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY OR FIGHT DIRECTION

Tracey Power – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
Phil Nero – Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West
John Knight – Julius Caesar – The Shakespeare Company, Ground Zero Theatre, and Hit & Myth Productions
Laryssa Yanchuk – Sherlock Holmes & the American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
Linda Garneau – Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING MUSICAL DIRECTION

David Terriault – Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary
Jacques Lacombe – Tosca – Calgary Opera
Konrad Pluta – Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West
Joe Slabe – Touch Me: songs for a (Dis)Connected Age – Forte Musical Theatre Guild, presented by Theatre Calgary
Don Horsburgh – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Jamie Konchak – Miss Caledonia – Lunchbox Theatre
Myla Southward – Much Ado About Nothing – The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions
Anna Cummer – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
Anna Cummer – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
Bracken Burns – Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Tyrell Crews – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
Tyrell Crews – Much Ado About Nothing – The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions
Devon Dubnyk – The Santaland Diaries – Lunchbox Theatre
Christopher Hunt – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
Eric Wigston – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING NEW PLAY

Glory – Tracey Power
Nine Dragons – Jovanni Sy
Flight Risk – Meg Braem
Inner Elder – Michelle Thrush
Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story – Natalie Meisner

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Michelle Thrush – Inner Elder – Lunchbox Theatre
Myla Southward – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
Camille Pavlenko – Blackbird – Verb Theatre
Makambe K. Simamba – A Chitenge Story – Handsome Alice Theatre
Jamie Konchak – Constellations – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A DRAMA

Christopher Hunt – Flight Risk – Lunchbox Theatre
Stephen Hair – Blow Wind High Water – Theatre Calgary
Curt McKinstry – Blackbird – Verb Theatre
Braden Griffiths – Julius Caesar – The Shakespeare Company, Ground Zero Theatre, and Hit & Myth Productions
Michael Tan – Constellations – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING DIRECTION

Jillian Keiley – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
Ron Jenkins – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
James MacDonald – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
Glynis Leyshon – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
Vanessa Porteous – The Humans –Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A MUSICAL

Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary
Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West
Touch Me: Songs for a (Dis)connected Age – Forte Musical Theatre Guild, presented by Theatre Calgary
Tosca – Calgary Opera
Murder for Two – Stage West

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A PLAY

Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
Inner Elder – Lunchbox Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit
Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
Blackbird – Verb Theatre

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Alberta Theatre Projects: Contemporary, clever & cutting edge live theatre in the heart of Calgary.
Birnton Theatricals: Producing theatre that will entertain and show the world from a different view.
Calgary Opera: Our BOLD new 2018-19 season starts with Roméo & Juliette, followed by the Canadian premiere of Everest, and ends with Rigoletto.
Downstage: Canadian theatre that creates meaningful conversation around social issues.
Forte Musical Theatre Guild: A Canadian not-for-profit company dedicated to the professional development and production of new musical theatre works.
Green Fools Theatre: Not-for-profit Theatre specializing in masks, puppets, stilts.
Handsome Alice Theatre Company: Devoted to unleashing the female voice through the development, creation, and production of inclusive, curious, and rebellious theatre works.
Lunchbox Theatre: One of the most successful noon hour theatre companies in the world.
One Yellow Rabbit: Performance artifacts for the seriously curious.
Quest Theatre: An Award-winning Theatre for Young Audiences company based in Calgary.
Sage Theatre: Creates bold, intimate, thoughtful plays exploring the human condition. We showcase talented Albertan artists.
The Shakespeare Company: Calgary’s lean and mean classical theatre company
Stage West Theatre Restaurants: We bring you the greatest entertainers from the stage, the screen and the music world along with our 120-item gourmet buffet! Play With Your Dinner!
Theatre Calgary: Our 2018-19 season includes Honour Beat, Mary and Max – A New Musical, A Christmas Carol, BOOM X, The Scarlet Letter and Billy Elliot The Musical
Verb Theatre: Tomorrow’s theatre, today.
Vertigo Theatre: The only professional theatre in Canada producing a series of plays based on the mystery genre.

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BETTY MITCHELL: After working for ten years in Calgary schools, the University of Alberta graduate moved to Western Canada High School in 1934. Drama was introduced into the curriculum in 1936 and the former biology teacher found herself Director of the Drama Department. Betty had discovered the great love of her life.

She received the Rockefeller Fellowship in 1942, an M.A. from the State University of Iowa in 1944, followed by a National Research Fellowship from the Cleveland Playhouse. That same year, Betty and her students founded their infamous Workshop 14 which would go on to win nine Dominion Drama Awards and become a training ground for future theatre professionals.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Betty was a force behind MAC 14 (after a merger of Workshop 14 and the Musicians’ and Actors’ Club), which eventually became Theatre Calgary. As producer, director, and teacher, Betty helped to build a vibrant stage community in Calgary and became sought after as an adjudicator and speaker across Canada.

As achievements mounted, so too did awards, including a City of Calgary citation for her contribution to culture and art. She received an Honourary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Alberta in 1958 for her achievements in amateur theatre, the only such doctorate awarded in Canada. Anyone for whom theatre is a passion owes a huge debt of gratitude to Calgary’s first lady of theatre.

Actor Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes — Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Sherlock Holmes and the American Problem by R. Hamilton Wright. Photo by Tim Nguyen

BRADEN GRIFFITHS: Braden Griffiths has been an actor and playwright in Calgary for 14 years. He has performed in over 60 professional productions predominantly in Calgary but also, on various stages in Western Canada and occasionally, when he’s very fortunate, in Asia and Australia. His play My Family and Other Endangered Species, written with Ellen Close, was published by Playwright’s Canada Press. He has multiple Betty Mitchell Award Nominations for both acting and playwriting, taking home the Betty in 2015 for his performance in The Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. This is his 11th year on the Betty Mitchell Awards Board.

THE BETTY MITCHELL AWARDS: The Betty’s were founded by Grant Linneberg, Mark Bellamy, Donna Belleville, Johanne Deleeuw and Dianne Goodman. Named after one of the great arts educators and a pivotal member of the community of artists that founded Theatre Calgary (just over 50 years ago) the Betty Mitchell Awards were started in order to celebrate the excellence of Calgary’s theatre community 21 years ago. Many aspects of the Betty Mitchell Awards have remained constant over the years: the Board (formerly called the Steering Committee) has always been peopled by volunteers from within the community; the Nominating Committee has always been comprised of a group of twelve individuals and that jury changes every year; the guidelines have remained remarkably intact from the first year of the Betty’s (the semantics have evolved but, their spirit remains the same) and (until this year) the Awards have always been disseminated in August. However, as the Calgary Theatre Community continues to change and grow so too have the Betty’s: multiple Awards have been added over the years (most recently Outstanding Projection Design and Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble); the Awards venue has recently moved away from it perennial home at Stage West and they are now presented in the Vertigo Playhouse; since the closing of the Auburn, the after party has officially become a part of the Betty’s Board planning and arrangements for the night. As much as the Bettys (the statues themselves) are a professional theatre Award, the Bettys (the evening of the awards) have become the one night a year where the community comes together to celebrate all that we have been, all that we are and all that we hope to become.

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This interview with Braden Griffiths has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This article has been updated to include the winners in each category. The opening has been rewritten slightly to reflect that the awards happened. The initial article was written before the awards and linked to tickets for the event.

Interview with Lunchbox Theatre Director of Marketing & Communications Lauren Thompson

Posted on June 7, 2018April 19, 2024 by James Hutchison

Lauren Thompson – Director of Marketing & Communications – Lunchbox Theatre

“Have fun and be creative. If you won’t find it interesting to read why is your audience going to find it interesting to read? If you don’t like the way it looks, chances are your audience won’t like the way it looks. So, trust you and do what you want to do. Marketing is the place where you can be creative and do your own things. Financial people have to follow a budget – have to follow numbers, but marketing is that world where you can have your creative juices flow, if you will.” – Lauren Thompson Director of Marketing & Communications

You know it’s not true. The whole idea that all you have to do is build it and they will come. That idea only works in metaphysical baseball stories. In the real world, if you build it – you have to tell them about it – and then they’ll come.

Maybe.

Marketing is the process of telling people your story and why they should buy your product or service, and in the theatre world that means finding ways of reaching people and telling them why they should come and see your show.

I sat down with Lauren Thompson, shortly before she left her position as the Director of Marketing & Communications for Lunchbox Theatre, to talk with her about her approach to marketing and some of things she’s done during her time at Lunchbox.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So tell me what you noticed when you first started as the marketing manager for Lunchbox Theatre three years ago.

LAUREN THOMPSON

When I first started I noticed that although Lunchbox had moved into the Calgary Tower location in 2008 a lot of people still didn’t know we were there. The theatre people did. The theatre community people did. But our normal audience, of the downtown working crowd, either thought we’d shut our doors or knew that we’d moved, but they didn’t really know where we were, or they had stopped paying attention.

JAMES

Lunchbox Theatre in the heart of Calgary under the Tower

The move really hurt Lunchbox in terms of people going to it?

LAUREN THOMPSON

It wasn’t convenient for the typical audience that they were seeing. And convenient in the sense that before the move they were in Bow Valley Square. There were five other buildings, or whatever, connected through the plus 15s and it was right in the middle of a food court and there was a lot of foot traffic. There were a lot of positives going on over there. And there are so many positives that have come out of the move here, but the audience, and the traffic, and the regular patrons, and what defined Lunchbox was changing.

JAMES

Okay then, what is Lunchbox? And what does it mean to the community?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Well, I really think Lunchbox has changed. It’s not this convenient stop in for one hour, and you don’t really know what you’re going to get, but it’s here, and you’ll have your lunch. It’s now a destination. We have to program shows to make people want to put in that extra five-minute walk down Stephen Avenue to come see us.

And I think now we’re really focused on Lunchbox as an incubator of sorts. We workshop new plays, but we’re also a company for emerging artists, new designers, and new directors through our RBC emerging directors program and our Stage One Festival, and all these things give a place for these emerging artists to really grow, and then to move onto the Theatre Calgary stages, or the Vertigo stages, or the ATP stages.

JAMES

I was doing a little reading and it was talking about people needing to think about the theatre experience beyond the performance. It’s not just the show. It’s the whole atmosphere. It’s everything.

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

Lauren Thompson – Having fun with Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

LAUREN THOMPSON

It is everything. I had a lot of fun with Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets this year. That was Dale Lee Kwong’s play that went up over the Chinese New Year. I specifically remember that one because it was this culture that I didn’t know a lot about. And it was so specific to Chinese New Year and those traditions. Dale was super supportive and taught us everything, and she gave me this forty-page document about all the traditions that they do and what red and gold means and what these symbols mean and why they do these things. I really wanted people to enter the theatre and read these quotes and fun facts along the wall about Chinese New Year and just be immersed in this new culture and this new experience. And on Instagram I did little fortune cookies, so you had a little image of a fortune cookie and you had to slide the image and it would be a different fortune every day. It was just fun posts that aren’t directly promoting the show, but it’s creating awareness and fun and excitement.

JAMES

You have a ten-dollar Thursday night. What was the genesis of that?

LAUREN THOMPSON

The first Thursday night show of every run was our lowest-selling show. So, we were hey, what can we do to entice people to come see the show and see what works? We didn’t know if it was going to work the first year we did it, but it did, and it blew up, and now it’s consistently the first show that sells out.

JAMES

Why do you need a full audience in there?

LAUREN THOMPSON

In Calgary, people are waiting for word of mouth. So, we need full theatres that first week to help get the word out, and by the time the first week’s over and the word of mouth has gotten out our second and third weeks fill up.

JAMES

Of course, nowadays social media is one of the main ways to help spread the word. How do you incorporate social media into your marketing?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Social media is basically doing some of our word of mouth for us, but we can help facilitate that word of mouth a little bit. We can put out a photo, or we can put out a comment and people will share that comment or photo with their own tag and their own comment in it.

JAMES

So, what types of content are you creating? Because I notice, just for an example, The Shakespeare Company will do an interview with one of their actors and post it on their website and then promote it through their social media.

LAUREN THOMPSON

Well, this year I found that the traditional media calls were not always happening. We’ve had a media call planned and the media has had to cancel, last minute, because there was an accident, or something else came up, or whatever, right? So, this year I said to Samantha MacDonald, our Artistic Producer, that we need to do it ourselves. I can’t rely on the media to get the story of our show out there. So, I started the coffee chats that I post on Facebook and Instagram.

I would interview two people from the production. Typically, the playwright or director and then an actor from the show and ask them questions about the process, about the play, and about their characters – what would typically come out in a media call. And then I put it out in the world so we’re not relying on something we have no control over. And it’s worked in our favour. And we’ve had media coverage this year, but I think those coffee chats opened up a different side. A more casual side. A different conversation about the play that a poster or a typical social media post won’t do for you.

JAMES

You know what I’m seeing that I really like? I’m seeing you and Theatre Calgary, and ATP, and The Shakespeare Company, and Vertigo are all using your social media to help each other.

LAUREN THOMPSON

This past season a few of the marketing directors from the different companies Theatre Calgary, ATP, Lunchbox, Vertigo, and I think Stage West just got together to chat and see how things were going and what are the trends and we realized – the same thing is happening across the board – and that we weren’t alone. And then the conversation turned to how do we support each other and get the word out about your show even though our shows on. Our show has the same actor that is in your next show coming up, so how do we do something about that, and let’s talk about that, and it’s become so wonderful to have that community of people who want to see all of us succeed.

JAMES

When you’re making your marketing decisions how much of your decisions are based on instinct and how much on research?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I personally am a much more instinctive person. I go with my gut, a lot. We tagged this season as, “What are you hungry for?” You know, are you hungry for culture? Are you hungry for family stories? Are you hungry for Canadian stories? And along with that – I don’t even know where it came from – I heard about the importance of taking time to take a break and getting away from your desk and taking an hour to take in arts and culture. And I ran with that idea before the season started. Yes, Lunchbox is one hour, it’s not expensive, it’s great theatre, but really like what is it doing for your life? It is giving you one hour of culture. It is giving you a one-hour break from a screen. It is giving you an hour to be with people and to watch live theatre and that has so many positive effects on you as a person. And I did all this research on workplace mental health and taking breaks and the importance of that but then channeling that into easily fun digestible posts or ads. And one of the ads – we did a bunch of ads in surrounding corporate towers and literally my promo was Lunchbox is a five-minute walk and it’s 621 steps. Get your steps for the day. Come to Lunchbox for an hour. And get your steps on your way back to the office.

JAMES

One of the things we talked about before the interview was based on your experience do you have any tips or lessons learned that people could take away in regards to marketing?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I do, but there are a million others. I would say, be open to ideas is number one. Be open to exciting new technology that’s coming out to apps to trends. The trends that are coming out are trends for a reason. Try them and see if they work for your company and your audience. Everything moves quickly. So, react to it all. And take it on your own spin.

Tip number two would be to have fun and be creative. If you won’t find it interesting to read why is your audience going to find it interesting to read? If you don’t like the way it looks, chances are your audience won’t like the way it looks. So, trust yourself and do what you want to do. Marketing is the place where you can be creative and do your own things. Financial people have to follow a budget have to follow numbers, but marketing is that world where you can have your creative juices flow, if you will.

JAMES

It’s a bit of magic.

LAUREN THOMPSON

Totally. My third one is to have a consistent voice. Know your brand. Know your company and your voice regardless. It might have a different tone for your different mediums. Our Instagram has a different tone than our Facebook, but it’s still a consistent voice, and I still know what the brand is and you’re always pushing that. Whatever you do it has to fall under that umbrella.

JAMES

Alright, lets talk about the importance of a healthy box office. How much do you think having a healthy box office impacts the overall company specifically your ability to get donations and other funding?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I don’t think it’s a secret that arts in Calgary are suffering. And we’re very aware. Sam does a preshow chat to the audience before every single show, and in the later half of the year we started to add in – you know obviously we’re struggling like everyone else, and it was just an awareness of it, and if you want to ask more questions and you want to help please come find us after the show. It’s just being transparent about it, and then people come and see the shows and support the shows and leave the shows talking about how much they love it and how much they want it to be around. We had some people come to Girl Crush with Sharron Matthews which was the first Lunchbox show they had ever seen, and the next thing you know we’re getting cheques of money because they loved it so much.

Sharron Matthews in Girl Crush at Lunchbox Theatre Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

Now, Girl Crush, just because you mentioned it, was a really interesting show.

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yes.

JAMES

Because it turned Lunchbox into a cabaret.

LAUREN THOMPSON

It did.

JAMES

And it did very well.

LAUREN THOMPSON

It was a gamble and it paid off.

JAMES

It was an entertaining and successful show and it showed that you can do a lot in that space. It expands in the consumer’s mind your venue as an entertainment venue rather than just theatre. Are there plans to do more?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yes, we have a cabaresque show starting the season called Mickey and Judy by Michael Hughes.

JAMES

Traditionally September is a tough sell. Is that one of the reasons you’re going with the cabaret to see how it does?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yes. September is hard on every theatre. This year we had Book Club II. The sequel to Book Club by Meredith Taylor-Parry. And it did well, but it also struggled just with it being in the September slot – nothing to do with the show. Mickey and Judy is a show that we’re really excited about – it being a musical and having a different style to it – the Cabaret feel you know. It’s a different exciting start to things.

Arielle Rombough, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley, Curt Mckinstry, Anna Cummer – in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Book Club II: The Next Chapter by Meredith Taylor Parry. Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

Okay then, lets talk about next season. I really like the artwork.

LAUREN THOMPSON

I am obsessed with the artwork.

JAMES

Tell me the story behind this.

LAUREN THOMPSON

So, last season we found a new graphic designer. And she did all of the artwork for the 17/18 season. The two-tone kind of colours and the single image kind of graphic look and it was similar to what Lunchbox had been doing but just a little more mature a little more modern. And this year our programming is taking a new shift, and we’re doing different styles and kinds of shows, and this is Sam’s first programmed season as artistic producer, and so we sort of chatted with her and said we’re open to new ideas.

JAMES

So, you went to the graphic artist?

LAUREN THOMPSON

We went to the graphic artist. Her name is Kimberly Wieting, and she’s young, and she’s so good at what she does.

JAMES

She has her own company?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yeah, she’s an individual contractor, and she’s incredible. Her company is Gritt Media. We sat down with her, and Sam and I chatted about the season. We gave her a brief synopsis of everything and said, “Tell us what you want to do.” And she pitched this concept of this image on image and black with a pop of colour and it was a lot of work, but it was so worth it. And it’s just a totally different look for Lunchbox.

And it’s like we’ve said, Lunchbox has been around forever. Everyone knows Lunchbox, but now you’re looking at it differently. And we want them to. Our shows are different. Our production quality is different. Our outlook on what we’re doing, the projects we’re taking on, the scripts we’re developing, everything is different, and we’re shifting, and we want the imagery of Lunchbox to shift with us, and we think it’s gone in the perfect direction.

JAMES

Sounds like such an exciting time to be a part of Lunchbox, so what’s going on with you?

LAUREN THOMPSON

And ahhh – I’m going to leave!

JAMES

So, tell me what’s the opportunity for you?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I’m moving to Amsterdam this summer. And I really just needed a change. I don’t know how else to explain it. It was this whim in February. I just sort of was like – I need to go do this. I looked into visas, and most visas in most countries are the working holiday visa, and they’re only valid until you’re thirty. So, I said, I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t have a partner. I don’t really have anything tying me down. I can come back to this wonderful community – that I know will take me back when I come back – and I just need to go. I need to do this.

JAMES

What are you going to do?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I have no idea. (Laughs) Step one is find a place to live. I just want to work when I’m over there. I want to travel. I just want to meet people.

JAMES

Well, good for you for doing this. Do you think this explains part of your success as a marketer? I mean just even in your own life the willingness to take a risk – to try something new – to see how it works?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Maybe. And I’m realizing more and more, I react on my gut a lot. I follow my gut, and looking back on things and the decisions I’ve made – even the gut decision to take the job at Lunchbox – I’ve always followed that, and it’s always led me in the right direction. And my gut is telling me to go to Amsterdam, and so I’m just going to do it. And we’ll see what happens.

***

Lunchbox Theatre is located at the base of the Calgary Tower. Regular season shows run Monday to Saturday at 12:00 pm with a 6:00 pm show on Thursday and Friday. Individual tickets are just $25.00. Group discounts, play passes and regular tickets can be purchased online at Lunchbox Theatre or by calling the box office at 403-265-4292 x 0.

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Lunchbox Theatre 2018/19 Season

Mickey & Judy – September 17 to October 6, 2018

Playwright Michael Hughes
Performer Michael Hughes

As a young boy, Michael Hughes was obsessed with musicals and liked to dress in women’s clothing. His parents, confused by his behaviour and determined to cure him, sent him to the Clark Institute in Toronto. Mickey & Judy offers a wildly funny and touching account of Michael’s real-life journey from the psychiatric ward to Off-Broadway. With a score that spans from Broadway classics to the best of the Judy Garland songbook, this inspiring cabaret show will have you laughing, crying, and singing along like no one is listening.

Brave Girl – October 22 to November 10, 2018

Playwright Emily Dallas
Directed by Valmai Goggin
Musical Direction by Joe Slabe

In 2002, Sam and Amy lose their father to the war in Afghanistan. Determined to follow his legacy and do their father proud, the sisters enlist and support each other through the joys and hardships of military training. As the two girls advance, their individual journeys take a very different course. Will their friendship survive? At what cost? Taking its inspiration from the life of Sandra Perron, Canada’s first female infantry officer, this beautiful new Remembrance musical examines the life of women in power and the sacrifices that must be made.

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play – November 26 to December 22, 2018

Playwright Joe Landry
Directed by Craig Hall

Back by popular demand! It’s Christmas Eve and the unimaginable has happened. George Bailey is on the edge of ruin; thousands of dollars are lost and with seemingly no way to save the old Bailey Savings & Loan, George wonders if the world would be better off had he never lived? With the help of a rookie angel and a cast of charming characters, It’s a Wonderful Life reminds us that we are each precious and important. Conceived as a live 1940s radio broadcast, this classic holiday story of love and redemption will be brought to life on stage by our Betty Mitchell Award-winning ensemble.

Sansei: the Storyteller – January 14 to 26, 2019

Playwright Mark Kunji Ikeda
Performer Mark Kunji Ikeda

On December 7, 1941, an attack on Pearl Harbour triggered events in Canada that may easily be described as among the darkest in our history – the internment and dispossession of tens of thousands of Japanese Canadians. Through an engaging blend of dance, spoken word and loads of humour, Mark Ikeda weaves a tale that is illuminating and profoundly personal. Sansei: The Storyteller offers Ikeda’s observations about the internment, his own discovery of where he came from, and how Japanese Canadians found peace.

Assassinating Thomson – February 11 to March 2, 2019

Playwright/Performer Bruce Horak
Directed by Ryan Gladstone

Bruce Horak is a critically acclaimed visual artist, actor and playwright who lives with just 9% of his vision. In this, his one-man tour-de-force, Horak delves into the mysterious death of famous Canadian painter Tom Thomson and the subsequent rise of the Group of 7. Art, politics, ambition, love and murder all take the stage in Horak’s compelling work. As he explores the facts and fictions around Thomson’s death, Horak shares his own story and the unique way in which he sees the world. And if that weren’t enough – while mesmerizing them with his words, Horak paints an original portrait of the audience at every show.

Gutenberg the Musical – April 1 to 20, 2019

Playwright Scott Brown & Anthony King
Directed by Samantha MacDonald

Bud and Deb are aspiring playwrights about to give the performance of their lives. It’s a backer’s audition, and in a desperate, bravely hopeful bid to fulfill their dreams of a Broadway production, Bud and Deb, with an overwhelming supply of enthusiasm will sing all the songs and play all the parts in their “big splashy” musical about Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. Will all their dreams come true? Gutenberg! The Musical! is a raucous spoof of all things musical and is guaranteed to mildly offend everyone equally.

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Lunchbox Theatre was founded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada by Bartley and Margaret Bard and Betty Gibb in 1975. Lunchbox produces one-act plays that deliver a fun and unique theatre experience in an intimate and comfortable black box theatre space. Patrons are encouraged to eat their lunch while they enjoy the show. Lunchbox is one of the most successful and longest-running noon-hour theatre companies in the world.

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Lauren Thompson has a degree in Tourism Management and Marketing from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. She grew up singing and performing with the Youth Singers of Calgary and is now a teacher for the Youth Singers as well as a choreographer and performer who has worked with numerous local companies including Storybook Theatre, Lunchbox Theatre, Forte Musical Theatre, The Shakespeare Company and Theatre Calgary. Lauren became the Director of Marketing and Communications for Lunchbox Theatre in 2015 which has allowed her to utilize her degree and educational background with her love for the arts.

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Interview with Playwright Neil Fleming: Spare Parts

Posted on May 23, 2018April 19, 2024 by James Hutchison

Neil Fleming – Playwright, Designer, Television Writer/Producer

“There’s an artistic epiphany in my play John Doe Jack Rabbit. There’s a moment where the TV’s broken and they’re stuck in this cabin and they’re on the lam and this one guy Gordy is reading a book – it’s this trashy horrible romance novel called Ravaged at Rush Hour. But then he gets so sucked into this book – as if he’s never read a book before – and he has this moment where he’s like, the person who wrote this book wrote it down so I would know what it feels like to be Jessica in the cab or whatever it was, right? And that was one of those things. That’s what playwriting is about. What art is about. This is what it’s like to feel like I feel, and I put it into this painting for you to grasp that concept, or I put it in this play for you to go – wow that’s what’s going on in your head.” Neil Fleming

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Neil Fleming is a multi-talented, award winning Calgary designer, playwright and television producer. In our hour and a half chat last Friday Neil and I talked about all kinds of things including playwriting, depression, Chuck Wendig, poltergeists and ADHD. The purpose of our getting together was to talk about Neil’s playwriting and specifically his current play, Spare Parts, which is being workshopped at the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre this week.

JAMES HUTCHISON

As a writer we spend long hours alone at the writing desk and sometimes we find ourselves facing internal or external resistance to a particular writing project or even our own writing career. Who in your life gives you the support and feedback you need that lets you continue on your journey?

NEIL FLEMING

Well my first sounding board has always been Jane, my wife. When I’m done a draft, I’ll be like, can you take a second to read this? And bless her, she’ll drop everything and go in the other room and I’ll sit there and listen to her while I’m trying to distract myself, but really I’m listening to her reading it and asking her what she’s laughing at if she’s laughing just to make sure she’s not laughing at an inside joke between the two of us that I intended for a larger group.

JAMES

Are you more nervous giving her the first draft to read, do you think, than when it’s ready for an audience?

NEIL

No, I don’t think so. I trust her. We have similar taste in story and content, but she likes things that are a bit darker than I do.

JAMES

And you’re pretty dark at times.

NEIL

I can be. But I think humour has always been a defense mechanism for me. It’s my way of not going to the dark place. More recently I’ve been trying to challenge myself to have something to say and not just be silly.

JAMES

But when you did Last Christmas that was dealing with someone dying of cancer. It was a comedy and a Christmas show.

NEIL

Sure. Pam Halstead at Lunchbox had commissioned me to write that. She wanted it to be a dysfunctional family at Christmas made up of people’s Christmas horror stories. So, there’s some Pam Halstead in it. The inflatable husband. One of her siblings bought her an inflatable husband one Christmas, and she opened it in front of everyone, and it was horrible and awful and fun but real, right?

I tried to come up with a family that didn’t resemble my own and didn’t resemble my wife’s where I could use details from real people but no one was able to accuse me of writing about my brother-in-law or whatever. They were fictional characters, but then so many people came up to me after the show because those characters resonated so strongly, and they’d say, “Oh that’s like my sister-in-law, and I can’t believe she’s in your play.”

JAMES

So, it touched on some universal characteristics.

NEIL

For sure. What I like to do is find little bits of truth and craft around those. Last Christmas started because one of my wife’s best friends worked at a dispensary in Vancouver, and her job was to teach old people how to roll a joint because they’d been given medicinal marijuana with a prescription, and they’d never smoked a joint before. And that’s just such an awesome image. So, I wanted the pot smoking grandpa. I just thought what a great start.

JAMES

And then there’s a lovely part of that play where the grandson and the grandfather have a bonding experience. Where they’re sharing the marijuana.

NEIL

I think that’s a favourite moment for the audience. It’s Christmas Eve, and the grandfather and the grandson are listening to Nat King Cole, and grandpa is experiencing being high for the first time. But they’re just having one of those philosophical conversations.

I love the absurdity of real things. One of my favourite things to do when I was looking for something fresh or new is I’d go to the news of the weird, and I have a play called Gnomes about garden gnomes and literally there was a news article about the Garden Gnome Liberation Front, I think, in Paris and they had broken into a garden show, and they stole all these antique gnomes, and then in the town square spelled out, Free the Gnomes with the gnomes.

And so, my concept for that play was there were three characters. Character one was a collector, and his parents had this massive collection of gnomes, and there was an incident where somebody came and smashed a bunch of them. And then here’s a woman from The Garden Gnome Liberation Society. I changed that. And then the last guy was from a group called DAMAGE which was defending all mankind against gnome evil, because he believed that gnomes were secretly evil, and that they come to life. And so, it became this argument between the three characters – were gnomes good, or evil, or ceramic?

JAMES

The new play you’re working on with Lunchbox Theatre is called Spare Parts and has three characters. There’s Martin a widower living alone in the haunted apartment his wife Sarah convinced him to buy, and on the anniversary of the accidental death of his wife and daughter Emily, Martin decides to take an overdose of anti-depressants.

Then there’s Eric, Martin’s upstairs neighbour, and a former human guinea pig for pharmaceutical companies, who is now developing and promoting a new Life Style System that focuses on exercise, recreation, and meditation through colouring as a pathway to an enjoyable life.

And finally, there’s Sarah, Martin’s dead wife. As Martin trips through his various symptoms, side-effects, and visions, we meet Sarah as a memory. In life, Sarah had a business taking people on tours of haunted buildings. She knew the story of Lester – who had been found dead in a heritage building – presumably payback for a romantic tryst. When she heard the apartment was coming on the market, she knew she had to convince Martin to buy it and move in. These three characters…

NEIL

Well, four if you count Lester.

JAMES

Four characters are caught up in a story about suicide, depression, guilt, religion, and the supernatural. First question, how much of that is based on personal experience?

NEIL

Well I didn’t know this at the time, but I did struggle with anxiety and depression. It was more anxiety, I think. Depression I didn’t know how to define. I didn’t know anything about mental health really. Depression to me was sadness, as a writer. As a clinical term it’s something else. What I was struggling with was my inability to focus and accomplish things and constantly feeling like I was getting lapped by younger writers or whatever. I was like why can’t I get anything done?

Recently I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and it was such a relief to finally know what I’ve been struggling with my entire life really. But, before I was diagnosed I was buying a book by Peter Shankman called Crazy Publicity Stunts and Why Your Company Should Do Them because I was thinking of doing a street theatre project that was sort of a social media experiment. And beside that book, in the people who bought this book also bought section, was another book by Peter Shankman called, Faster Than Normal. How to hack your ADHD brain and unleash your super power. And I was like, I want to read that. I ordered both of them. And that book explained my entire life, my entire history, and I was like Oh, my God. That’s my childhood. This is high school. University. All of those things, and I could see how things went sideways

And when you’re a writer and you sit down to write something it’s work. The first draft is always fun, but fixing it and fine tuning it that’s work, and if nobody’s breathing down your neck waiting for a draft then it’s easy to just let that one sit there and start something new. So, I have a lot of different projects that haven’t seen the light of day because I haven’t been able to focus. I started Spare Parts years ago, and it was part of my mental health journey.

The other thing with ADHD is that when I need to focus I can hyper focus. That’s the H part. As an adult it’s not hyper activity it’s impulse control. And so, yesterday I was writing solid for five to six hours on the play because I have to give them something to read by Monday so we can start to work on it.

JAMES

Who are you working with.

NEIL

Col Cseke is the director. Graham Percy is playing Martin. Matt McKinny is Eric, and Julie Orton is Sarah. And some things have changed already from your introduction. I’ve cut the daughter. They rent the place they don’t buy it. I know I’ve made that note before about Eric being a Guinee pig so he knows what the prescription is and what it does, because I need somebody in there to help detail what’s going on for the audience because your brain is a complex machine. That’s what fascinated me about this idea in the first place, because when I was struggling with those anxiety issues I talked to my doctor about it – this was years ago – and she gave me a trial prescription of Escitalopram which is a serotonin inhibitor in a way. And when I got the pills they came with warnings.

JAMES

The side effects?

NEIL

It was a crazy.

JAMES

Scary list?

NEIL

It’s supposed to help you, but like how could it maybe do that to you.

JAMES

Do the exact opposite.

NEIL

Well if you have suicidal tendencies it could amplify that.

JAMES

That’s frightening.

NEIL

Yeah, and I’m like, do I want to take this, and so you know I decided at the time I don’t think this is for me. But I kept the information and that’s what started it.

JAMES

That’s what started this play six or seven years ago?

NEIL

More than that – I think, 2007 is what my hard drive tells me was a first draft. So, I’ve learned a lot in the last eight or nine years. Mostly in the last year. What’s always interested me as a writer are the odd outlying people. Spare Parts is kind of about that. It’s about people just on the outskirts of regular society. Like the neighbor, Eric’s character. He’s trying to rediscover his purpose by starting this sort of life style system.

JAMES

It’s kind of a religion he’s working on?

NEIL

It’s open to all religions, because in his theory religion is part of the problem because of people bickering over the differences between theirs, and yours, and whatever.

JAMES

So, his philosophy could be placed over any faith?

NEIL

Yeah, his philosophy of life is to find the things that make you feel good because you’re only here for a finite amount of time.

JAMES

What are you hoping to accomplish in next week’s workshop?

NEIL

What I love about playwriting is it’s all about questions. Dramaturgy is all about questions, hopefully. And I don’t mind suggestions, but questions are great because I will write them all down, because a question from anyone – whether it’s from an actor, or a stage manager, or an audience member, represents a certain percentage of that population. There’s a lot more people who will have that same question. I lost you for two or three lines because you were hung up on something, so I always feel like you have to address those with what’s the simplest way for me to make that question go away. If it’s that kind of question.

I was just reading this book, Damn Fine Story, by Chuck Wendig who’s a novelist and a writing blogger. Terrible Minds is his blog. In his book, which is about story telling more than anything else, he uses Die Hard as an example. And at the root of it he says stories are about characters. Stories are rooted in character, and so a character has a problem, and then how they try to solve that problem is the story.

JAMES

And they either solve it, or they don’t.

NEIL

But what he pointed out – Bruce Willis’s character’s problem, John McClain – I only know that because he keeps referring to him in this book, but his problem is that his wife left him for this job in LA, and he’s a New York City cop, so he’s flown out at Christmas time to convince her to come home to get his family back together. And coincidentally all of this stuff goes down with Alan Rickman, and terrorists, and the tower, and him not having his shoes on – those are all coincidental pieces of the puzzle of I’m just trying to get back together here with my wife.

JAMES

And that’s what makes it work – the human element. You mentioned something in a previous interview when you were asked, “What do you think art is?” You said, “I suppose art is an expression of human emotion.” Why do you think we have this need to examine our emotional connection and reaction to other people, the world, and ourselves?

NEIL

I think that there are so many unanswered questions that we have. You know I took first year philosophy when I was at University and it was all Plato’s Republic and you couldn’t make me read that book – it was like painful. If it had been a survey course of all the philosophers I think I would have really gotten into it with different perspectives and stuff.

JAMES

Maybe theatre is philosophy on stage?

NEIL

Yeah, kind of. It’s trying to explain what it means to be a person, because we don’t know what happens after we die. As artists I think we’re always trying to reflect back, and sometimes it’s a fun house mirror reflection, but you know it’s also a compulsion. And I think the ADD is part of it too. I just started doing collage work with my photography. A few years ago we were in Paris for my wife’s 50^th birthday and I saw all these numbers every where, and I just started taking pictures of numbers – like address numbers and here and there, and I bought one of those big cheap print things for ten bucks form Homesense or whatever, and I pasted all of these photographs over top of it as a present for my wife, and here’s our entire Paris trip on one canvas, and you could see us in some of them, and some of the pictures were tiny, and I have no idea the compulsion that drove me to do that, but it felt like something I needed to do.

JAMES

It tells a story.

NEIL

Yeah, for sure and it’s something you can spend some time with it’s not just like, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that.” You can really sort of dive in and look at all those little details

JAMES

Do you think that’s what your plays are like? Like in terms of your process it reflects what you’re doing with your photography, because you’ve got all these different ideas, all these little bits, and now you’re putting them together, and the play itself when the audience comes to it is the experience of all these little pieces.

NEIL

Yes, and the takeaway will be different for everyone, you know, I think. Especially with this. There’s so much crazy content in this play. There’s an artistic epiphany in my play John Doe Jack Rabbit. There’s a moment where the TV’s broken and they’re stuck in this cabin they’re on the lam and this one guy Gordy is reading a book – it’s this trashy horrible romance novel called Ravaged at Rush Hour. But then he gets so sucked into this book – as if he’s never read a book before – and he has this moment where he’s like, the person who wrote this book wrote it down so I would know what it feels like to be Jessica in the cab or whatever it was, right? And that was one of those things. That’s what playwriting is about. What art is about. This is what it’s like to feel like I feel, and I put it into this painting for you to grasp that concept, or I put it in this play for you to go – wow that’s what’s going on in your head.

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Spare Parts is one of eight new plays being developed through The Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre from May 25^th to June 9th.

2018 Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work Free Reading Schedule

Spare Parts by Neil Fleming – Friday, May 25, 12:00PM
The Happiness Equation by Peter Fenton & Scott White – Friday, May 25, 6:00 PM
The Art of Kneading by Helen Knight – Saturday, May 26, 12:00 PM
Paul’s Grace by Anna Cummer – Friday, June 1, 12:00 PM
Candemic by Arun Lakra – Friday, June 1, 6:00 PM
Wo De Ming Shi Zhang Xin En by Kris Vanessa Teo – Saturday, June 2, 12:00 PM
Go for Gold, Audrey Pham by Camille Pavlenko – Friday, June 8, 12:00 PM
Reprise by Mike Czuba – Saturday, June 9, 12:00 PM

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

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.

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

An Interview with Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry: Book Club II

Posted on September 18, 2017September 19, 2022 by James Hutchison

Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry – Photograph James Hutchison

“I enjoy writing humour and I like the challenge. At the same time, if the story doesn’t have heart, if nothing serious is going on underneath the humour….what’s the point really? I want my plays to address some aspect of the human struggle that hopefully people can relate to. That’s what I want to see when I go to a play so naturally I aspire to that in my writing.” Meredith Taylor Parry interview Book Club II

***

Meredith Taylor-Parry is a Calgary-based actor and playwright whose fun and insightful comedy Book Club was a runaway hit for Lunchbox Theatre back in 2016. At that time I did a two-part interview with Meredith. In Part One we talked about Meredith’s play Survival Skills which won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off Off Broadway by the 13 Street Repertory Company. In Part Two we talked about Meredith’s play Book Club which was a funny and insightful look at motherhood and the joys and disappointments of life. Now in this third interview, Meredith and I talk about her very funny and moving sequel to Book Club – Book Club II: The Next Chapter, which premieres at Lunchbox Theatre and runs from September 18th to October 7th.

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JAMES HUTCHISON

The first Book Club was a big hit for Lunchbox Theatre and ended up having an extended and sold-out run. Audiences loved it! Why do you think the play resonated so well with audiences? And did you notice any difference in how men and women reacted to the play?

MEREDITH TAYLOR-PARRY

I knew I had a dream team as far as our director, actors, production and design team, but I never once imagined it would do so well! I can’t even tell you how much fun it was sitting in the audience listening to the laughs and waiting for the responses to my favourite moments. That was so exciting for me and unexpected.

I really think the reason the play resonated so well with people was because of the chemistry we had together as a group of artists. Everyone contributed so much to that script in the Stage One workshop process. There wasn’t one person in that room who didn’t add value to the script because everyone was brave enough to share themselves with me. I think that process and the generosity of the artists I was working with allowed me to find authenticity in the script along with the humour.

And, I think, the audiences liked it because they could relate to human beings, regardless of gender. One of the best comments I got was from a man who said, “good comedy is good comedy.”

Anna Cummer, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley, Arielle Rombough and Kathryn Kerbes in the 2016 Lunchbox Theatre Production of Book Club

JAMES

How soon after Book Club did you start thinking about a sequel?

MEREDITH

I was watching performances of Book Club sell out and I was thinking, better strike while the iron is hot Meredith! I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to approach Mark Bellamy, Lunchbox Theatre’s Artistic Producer, when things were going well, and I had already been working on an idea for a sequel based on a weekend I had spent in Banff with my girlfriends.

I have the BEST group of girlfriends. We’re all moms and we have a lot of laughs together, and I’m constantly writing down ideas when I’m with them. They don’t mind either, they’re very supportive of my writing.

So, I took my idea and managed to scrape together 20 pages of Book Club II and a rough outline and I submitted it to Mark pretty much as soon as Book Club closed.

He was thrilled and considered it for the 2016 Stage One workshop but, due to scheduling issues, we couldn’t get the same team together to work on it. So, he scheduled me in for the 2017 Stage One series AND programmed it for the beginning of this season. He let me know at the beginning of this year and it was very exciting and of course a bit terrifying because I didn’t have a full script yet.

JAMES

What is Book Club II about?

MEREDITH

I wanted to further explore the nature of really good female friendships and examine how that works within one’s marriage.

There’s a special kind of intimacy I share with my girlfriend’s and I’ve questioned how that affects my relationship with my husband. Does he feel left out because I rely on them so much? What about my girlfriend’s spouses? How do they feel?

The first play was all about good girlfriends supporting each other through the messy business that is motherhood. I wanted Book Club II to explore the toll parenthood takes on a marriage and examine where the character’s husbands fit into the complicated lives of these women.

Anna Cummer, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley and Arielle Rombough in a scene from the Lunchbox Theatre production of Book Club II: The Next Chapter – Playwright Meredith Taylor Parry Book Club II

JAMES

Even a good marriage has rough patches and, I think, unfortunately, our society places a lot of unrealistic expectations on our relationships. For example, there’s the idea that our romantic partners should know what we want and feel and think without us actually having to tell them. That’s a romantic notion that doesn’t reflect the reality of marriage or relationships. To make any relationship work, romantic or otherwise, you have to communicate. You have to tell your partner – when you’re hurting – what you need – what’s going on in your life – otherwise they won’t know. So, I guess what I’m asking is whether or not you think that some of the problems people face in their marriages are because the reality of marriage doesn’t live up to the romantic fantasy of marriage? And maybe – now that I think of it – men and women have different expectations of what marriage is?

MEREDITH

Yes, and yes! We are raised on a certain brand of romance. Cinderella has been around for a long, long time! I think we are both unrealistic in our expectations and I think men and women have different expectations for their romantic relationships. I also agree that communication is key. Humans are terrible mind readers yet we easily make assumptions about our partner’s thoughts and behaviours and communicate our needs in cryptic ways.

In the workshop, we did discuss the typical “husband on the couch while wife slams dishes into the dishwasher” scenario. Why doesn’t she just ask for help? Why doesn’t he pitch in without being asked? We also talked about the different expectations for men and women when it comes to emotional vulnerability in communication. I think we’re improving but there’s still a culture of emotional toughness when it comes to boys.

JAMES

Where did the actual story for Book Club II come from?

MEREDITH

It started with the original idea of the characters getting away for the weekend and talking about their marital woes. I talked with lots of girlfriends and a few male friends about their marriages and I also did a lot of reading. There’s a lot of material out there about marriage and relationships! I went back as far as Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus, remember that one?

One of my favourites was “How Not to Hate Your Husband After You Have Kids” by Jancee Dunn. So, the story of Book Club II contains bits and pieces of all the research I did and of course it evolved greatly in the Stage One workshop this past June. Curt Mckinstry was extremely helpful with developing the husband character. Once again, I was blessed with a generous artist who was willing to share himself. And, of course, I got the rest of my dream team back as well.

Cast of Book Club II – Anna Cummer, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley, Arielle Rombough and Curt Mckinstry Playwright – Meredith Taylor Parry Book Club II

JAMES

Did you feel any pressure writing the sequel? Were you able to focus on the writing without worrying about it being as big a success?

MEREDITH

The pressure made me sick to my stomach to tell you the truth. What if number two sucks? But the great thing about a deadline is, you have no choice. I wasn’t going to walk into the workshop empty handed. It was a very intense week, the script was rough and I spent a lot of late nights writing so that I could address the issues that had come up during the day. That kind of intense writing leaves no room for your inner critic to get in the way. I did breathe a sigh of relief at the reading however when the audience seemed to like it. I also completely trust Shari Wattling, my dramaturg/director. She keeps me truthful and she keeps me focused and tells me when I’m drifting off course.

JAMES

I think one of the things that worked so well in the first play was the mix of humour and drama all brought to life by a wonderful cast and a terrific production. And I’d say based on the reading for Book Club II, which I saw back in June, I think you’ve managed to capture that same mix of humour and drama. So, I’m curious when you’re writing is the mix between humour and drama something you do intentionally or is it more of an intuitive process?

MEREDITH

I guess when I’m working I’m always looking for ways to work in funny or quirky bits. I enjoy writing humour and I like the challenge. At the same time, if the story doesn’t have heart, if nothing serious is going on underneath the humour….what’s the point really? I want my plays to address some aspect of the human struggle that hopefully people can relate to. That’s what I want to see when I go to a play so naturally I aspire to that in my writing.

Arielle Rombough, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley, Curt Mckinstry and Anna Cummer in a scene from the Lunchbox Theatre production of Book Club II: The Next Chapter – Meredith Taylor Parry Book Club II

JAMES

It’s been a couple of years since you wrote the original Book Club. In what ways do you think you’ve evolved as a playwright?

MEREDITH

I’m learning more about structure and I’m learning more about the practice of writing. I was an on again off again kind of writer, creating in fits and starts and then buckling down when I had a deadline. But now, I write every day. A play is kind of like a lover, you need to give it attention so that it will give something back. If I give a play attention every day it seeps into my unconscious mind and feeds me new ideas constantly, even when I am not sitting at the computer. And hopefully on opening night, your lover doesn’t screw you over. Ha ha!

JAMES

If you loved Book Club you’re definitely going to love the sequel, but the great thing is you don’t need to have seen the first play in order to enjoy the second play. Both plays stand as full stories on their own. What do you want audiences to take away after they see the new story.

MEREDITH

My hope is that the audience will see a story they can relate to and enjoy a great night of theatre. I hope they will leave with a desire to see more theatre! There are so many spectacular offerings this season in Calgary!

JAMES

Are the girl’s stories going to continue? Is there a full-length play in the works? A book maybe? A possible television series?

MEREDITH

Good lord, you’re getting way ahead of me. Let’s see how this one goes first, shall we?

***

Book Club II: The Next Chapter runs from September 18th until October 7th at Lunchbox Theatre. Performance times are Monday to Saturday at 12:00 noon plus a 6:00 pm show on Thursdays and Fridays. Tickets are $26.00 for adults and $21.00 for students and seniors. Tickets can be purchased on-line at Lunchbox Theatre or by calling the box office at 403-265-4292 x 0.

Lunchbox Theatre 2017/2018 Season

Book Club II: The Next Chapter by Meredith Taylor-Parry
Book Club is back. Get ready for another page turner.
September 18 – October 7, 2017

During a weekend getaway where the girls talk about creating a Mommy Commune and Lisa runs into an old boyfriend, the girls of Book Club have to examine what marriage and sisterhood truly means to them.

CAST

Kira Bradley – Kathy
Anna Cummer – Ellen
Cheryl Hutton – Lisa
Arielle Rombough – Jenny
Curt Mckinstry – Barry / Bartender / Colin

CREATIVE TEAM

Meredith Taylor-Parry – Playwright Book Club II
Shari Wattling – Director
Chris Stockton – RBC Emerging Director
Terry Gunvordahl – Scenic & Lighting Design
Rebecca Toon – Costume Design
Allison Lynch – Sound Design
Ailsa Birnie – Stage Manager
Ava Bishop – Production Assistant

Flight Risk by Meg Braem
One man’s heroic journey to find peace.
October 23 – November 11, 2017

World War II veteran Hank Dunfield is about to celebrate his 100th birthday, but painful memories of his time as a tail gunner during the war don’t make him feel much like celebrating. Only his new nurse Sarah is finally able to get to the heart of Hank’s pain and sorrow and help Hank find peace with the past.

The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris, adapted by Joe Mantello
The is one elf that won’t make the nice list.
November 27 – December 23, 2017

An out-of-work actor in New York city takes a job as an elf in Macy’s Santaland Village and reveals all the crazy and hilarious behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the holiday season. A Christmas comedy for the little bit of humbug in all of us.

Inner Elder created and performed by Michelle Thrush
One woman show for all people.
Co-Presented with the High Performance Rodeo
January 15 – 27, 2018

Using real memories about her Grandmother’s impact on her life, award winning Calgary actress, Michelle Thrush takes audiences on a journey of discovery. A journey where we see the transformation from child to elder and learn that for everyone laughter is the best medicine.

Ai Yah! Sweet & Sour Secrets by Dale Lee Kwong
Dinner is served. So are juicy family secrets.
February 19 – March 10, 2018

When her father invites a surprise guest to celebrate Chinese New Years more than one family secret comes out of the closet and Chinese-Canadian Jade Wong is caught between being true to herself and living up to her family’s cultural expectations. A funny heart-warming story for anyone who has ever faced an awkward family dinner.

Miss Caledonia by Melody Johnson
This story will be over in an hour. Her Hollywood dreams may be too.
April 2 – 21, 2018

Peggy Ann Douglas dreams of becoming a Hollywood movie star and leaving behind all the stall cleaning, hay-baling drudgery of her 1950’s life on Rural Route 2. Step one is to sing, twirl and pivot her way to being crowned Miss Caledonia in the local pageant!

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Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry

Meredith Taylor-Parry is a playwright based in Calgary, Alberta. Her plays include So Long, a TYA play which toured Calgary and area schools in 2012 with Sandbox Children’s Theatre, Survival Skills (Winner New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest 2013) which was produced Off Off Broadway in 2014 by the 13 Street Repertory Company NYC and Devices which was produced as part of the 27th annual New Ideas Festival presented by Alumnae Theatre in Toronto. Her one act comedy, Book Club, received its world premiere at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary in 2016, performing for a majority of sold-out audiences and held over due to the play’s popularity. She is looking forward to returning to Lunchbox with the sequel this September: Book Club II: The Next Chapter. Meredith is a co-founder of Bigs and Littles Theatre Society and a stay-at-home mom to 11 and 12-year-old girls. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at the University of Calgary.

Lunchbox Theatre

Bartley and Margaret Bard and Betty Gibb founded Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary in 1975. Lunchbox delivers a fun and unique experience to its audience – upbeat performances in an intimate and comfortable atmosphere. Patrons are encouraged to eat their lunch while they enjoy the show. Lunchbox Theatre focuses on the development and production of original one-act plays; many of which are written by local Calgarians.

6 Guitars by Chase Padgett is a Fun and Uplifting Tribute to Music

Posted on January 5, 2017April 22, 2024 by James Hutchison

6 Guitars by is a one-man, six-character fun and uplifting tribute to music with plenty of laughs and lots of heart. The one-man standing on stage playing six characters and six different styles of music is Chase Padgett. Chase is a multi-talented musician, actor and storyteller who switches effortlessly between this cast of diverse characters as they tell their stories and play their kind of music.

There’s 87-year-old blues guitarist Tyrone; heavy metal rocker Michael; country-loving Rupert; jazz guitarist Wesley; classical guitarist Emmanual; and Peter who just loves to sing and play folk music.

Who wouldn’t want to see that show? I’ve seen it twice. Once at the Calgary Fringe back in 2013 and then again in 2015 when Chase performed his show at the Bert Church Theatre in Airdrie. And now, I’m happy to report, 6 Guitars will be at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary from January 9 to 28th as part of One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo.

The good news is I don’t have to wait until the show opens to recommend it. Like I said, I’ve already seen it – and I’ll be seeing it again. In fact, I’ve already got my tickets and I’ve been hounding some of my friends about going to see this show for some months now because – well – it’s just that damn good!

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Since 6 Guitars premiered at the Orlando Fringe in 2010 it’s been winning awards, getting rave reviews and selling out.

Jim Murchison of the Charlebois Post said, “The writing is terrific. The storytelling is personal and brilliant. It is great fun. With a shift in posture or a change in the eyes Padgett becomes a completely different character in an instant and he can capture the soul of music in his guitar and voice as well.”

Brad Oswald from The Winnipeg Free Press said, “Talk about hitting all the right notes — this energetic and exhilarating solo show by Portland, Ore., musician-actor Chase Padgett is a jaw-dropper on every level. The acting is superb, the stories are smart and funny, and the music is flat-out stunning. All the right notes, indeed.”

So if you want to see a terrific show that will make you feel good about life I can’t think of a better way to start 2017 than going to see 6 Guitars with Chase Padgett at Lunchbox Theatre.

Well, winning the lottery would be a pretty cool way to start 2017 too, but next to winning the lottery I can’t think of a better way to start 2017 than going to see 6 Guitars at Lunchbox Theatre from January 9th to 28th.

Unless, of course, you could build a functioning fusion reactor and solve the world’s energy problems. I mean that would be an amazing way to start the new year, but still – next to winning the lottery or building a functioning fusion reactor I can’t think of a better way to start 2017 than going to see 6 Guitars at Lunchbox Theatre during the High Performance Rodeo.

Twelve Thumbs Up – It’s a Wonderful Life at Lunchbox Theatre

Posted on December 6, 2016July 14, 2023 by James Hutchison

Andy Curtis, Devon Dubnyk, Arielle Rombough, Kevin Rothery, Katherine Fadum. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo

Gather up the family and invite your friends, coworkers and neighbours to come experience the true spirit of Christmas at Lunchbox Theatre’s production of It’s a Wonderful Life. Presented as a radio play from the 1940s this production is a fun, energetic and inventive retelling of the classic story.

The Lunchbox production features an outstanding cast, brilliant direction, a beautiful set and an amazing mix of sound – both recorded and created live – to bring the story of George Bailey and the town of Bedford Falls to life.

I give it two thumbs up. Although I went to see the play with my sister, her husband, my niece, her boyfriend, and his mom and we all gave it two thumbs up so that’s twelve thumbs, right? How can you argue with twelve thumbs? That’s got to be as good as, if not better than, four stars or five sugarplums.

It’s a Wonderful Life asks the question: Does your life matter? Can one man or woman make a difference?

Devon Dubnyk, Arielle Rombough. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo

I think there’s a fundamental human need to live a meaningful life. When we reach the end we want to feel, in some way, that we’ve made a difference – that we’ve made the world a better place.

But of course sometimes when we face a crisis in our life we feel lost. We feel like nothing matters. We feel like we don’t have a friend in the world, and if you’ve ever felt like that then you can relate to George Bailey as he stands on a bridge thinking about jumping into the icy waters below and ending it all.

Luckily for George he has a guardian angel. An angel named Clarence. And Clarence shows George what the town of Bedford Falls would be like had George never been born. Let’s just say that George made a big difference in the lives of a lot of people.

That’s the story in a chestnut shell and the Lunchbox Theatre production does an amazing job of telling that story. I love the fact that we’re transported back to a Christmas Eve in the 1940s to hear and be a part of a “live” radio broadcast.

Katherine Fadum, Arielle Rombough, Devon Dubnyk, Andy Curtis. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo

The production stars a talented and versatile cast that includes:

Kevin Rothery as Freddie Filmore playing Clarence & others
Devon Dubnyk as Jake Laurents playing George Bailey
Arielle Rombough as Sally Applewhite playing Mary Hatch
Katherine Fadum as Lana Sherwood playing Violet Bick & others
Andy Curtis as Harry Heywood playing Uncle Billy & Others
Connor Pritchard as the Studio Assistant Edward Irvine

The entire ensemble captures beautifully the feel and energy of a live radio show while bringing humour and warmth to a classic Christmas story.

And if you like Vertigo Theatre then you’ll be familiar with Craig Hall and his inventive staging of noir thrillers from the 40s and 50s. His affinity for that time period shines in this production and even though it’s a “radio play” there’s never a dull moment. The actors are kept moving as they participate in creating the story and jumping from character to character.

Kevin Rothery. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo

The script for It’s a Wonderful Life is an adaptation of the original 1946 film written and directed by Frank Capra and starring Jimmy Stewart. And even though this version of the story is less than half the length of the movie playwright Joe Landry manages to skillfully keep much of the plot without losing any of the heart of the original film.

The costumes by Deitra Kalyn and the set and the lighting design by Anton de Groot only add to the nostalgia and drama of the story.

And the sound design by Aidan Lytton – much of it created live on stage by Connor Pritchard and the rest of the cast – is a marvel to watch and experience because – as this production proves – you can build an entire world with sound. You can be transported to any time or place. And the Lunchbox Production of It’s a Wonderful Life not only transports us to Bedford Falls but it takes us on a journey where we are reminded about the truly important things in life and the real spirit of Christmas.

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After you see the show you can help spread the word by Tweeting about it, sharing an update to Facebook, posting about it on Instagram or writing a blog post. At the end of every Lunchbox Theatre Show the cast poses for photographs so you can add a photo to your social media shares. It’s a great idea and one that more theatre’s should be doing. Here’s my photo from when I saw the play:

Connor Pritchard, Andy Curtis, Devon Dubnyk, Kevin Rothery, Katherine Fadum, Arielle Rombough.

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And one final thought, that I have contemplated long and often on many a Christmas eve as I’ve sat waiting for Santa to arrive: Why on earth did George and his wife Mary name their daughter Zuzu?

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An Interview with Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry – Part Two: Book Club

Posted on February 2, 2016May 25, 2022 by James Hutchison

***

“The pattern is clear, women are drinking more. And not just in my circles. I think it’s a phenomenon in stay at home moms. It’s a way to get through the witching hour. It’s a way to relieve the anxiety and the pressure of information overload that moms now have because we’re trying to make the right choices. But there are so many choices laid out for us, with so many different arguments for which one is the right one, that we’re walking around with this mind boggling anxiety all the time that we’re making the wrong ones.”

***

There’s a new play premiering at Lunchbox Theatre next week by Calgary Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry called Book Club. It’s a funny and insightful look at being human, motherhood, and coping with life’s disappointments and joys.

And it’s funny – did I mention that?

Very funny. And beautifully written. I highly recommend it. So, take your daughter and your mother and your grandmother. Get your son and your father and your grandfather. Gather up the whole family, members of the Book Club, the Wine Club and the Social Club and make sure you head to Lunchbox Theatre and catch this gem of a play.

Last week, I published the first part of my interview with Meredith where we talked about her play Survival Skills. This week, in part two, we talk about her play Book Club.

***

JAMES HUTCHISON

You came to the acting late, and now you’ve come to the writing later. And even though you haven’t been writing a long time you’ve had good feedback and some success including a production Off Off Broadway for your play Survival Skills. And now you have a new production coming up, here in Calgary, at Lunchbox Theatre for your play Book Club. How much do you feel maturity has played a role in you becoming a writer?

MEREDITH TAYLOR-PARRY

For me maturity was very important. I don’t think I would have had the confidence or the stories to become a writer if I’d tried this when I was nineteen.

For someone else, who’s got that confidence and talent right from the womb, they can sit down in their twenties and tell these great stories. But I wouldn’t have had the confidence to be able to tell them on paper and be brave enough to share them and get the feedback. I feel like I needed to gather confidence over the years, and then just gather a wealth of stories because life happens to you, and to other people, and you can write them down and turn them into drama.

And I struggle with that, from time to time, as a writer – when someone tells you something personal and you go, “Jesus, that’s a good line.” But if you’re a writer that’s what you do. I don’t make this stuff up. It’s hand delivered right to you – and you sit there and you take things in and you remember details.

JAMES

What is Book Club about?

MEREDITH

It’s about a bunch of mommies who are meeting for Book Club and I wanted to examine different kinds of mommies that I’ve met or mommy types. You know there’s the type of mommy, like me, that would give her kid a hot dog, and then there’s the type of mommy that would see that as child abuse. But we’re all mommies, right.

And then there’s that competitive nature we seem to have as human beings. That seems to happen with mommies. If you show up with bought cookies, from Safeway on bake sale day, you feel less than the person who shows up with homemade cookies that she must have spent all night slaving over.

And I also wanted to explore a darker idea. The phenomenon of wine being a civilized version of Valium in our generation. You know people get together for play dates and they have wine. They meet for book club and they have wine. The pattern is clear, women are drinking more. And not just in my circles.

I think it’s a phenomenon in stay at home moms. It’s a way to get through the witching hour. It’s a way to relieve the anxiety and the pressure of information overload that moms now have because we’re trying to make the right choices. But there are so many choices laid out for us, with so many different arguments for which one is the right one, that we’re walking around with this mind boggling anxiety all the time that we’re making the wrong ones.

JAMES

Tell me about workshopping the play at Lunchbox.

MEREDITH

Once I did the workshop process it became pretty clear right away – any wine drinking that happened had to be pretty tame because we wanted it to be a comedy and we didn’t want to explore the idea of addiction in stay at home mother’s at this time.

JAMES

You touch on it very lightly.

MEREDITH

Very lightly.

JAMES

There’s a resolution at the end of maybe we should stop drinking wine and actually read some books. So it is dealt with. But it’s a very funny play. And I think it’s all about trying to figure out life – it’s about hopes and dreams and figuring out how you can do the role you’ve been put into and whether or not that role fits you. And even though it’s about motherhood I think it’s about anybody because male or female we can relate to that because that’s a universal thing. How many dads are dads going – “Did I want to be a dad? I did want to be a dad. But now that I’m a dad –

MEREDITH

– boy does this ever suck –

JAMES

– this isn’t exactly where I want to be –

MEREDITH

– I wouldn’t trade them for anything but wow this sure sucks in some ways.”

JAMES

I love that you explore that because that’s not an unusual feeling. To think what life could be without the children but we’re made to feel guilty about that.

MEREDITH

Or to want other things, right? Because being a parent is supposed to be our most important role. Yeah, I want to be a great mom but I also want to be a great writer too. But, no, no, no, I have to want to be a great mom more – right? That’s more important.

Thanks for all the positive feedback by the way. I was shocked that everybody found it so funny and liked it so much because it was such a pleasure to write and it was easy to put down on paper. It just fell out of me.

When I did the workshop I’d get up early in the morning and I’d write a new scene and I’d go in and I’d be sick to my stomach when they sat down to read it because I’d just wrote it that day. And then when I got good feedback I just remember being continuously shocked – “Really? You really like it? Does that work?” And then when Mark Bellamy from Lunchbox read it and said, “I really like your play.” Once again I’m still kind of astonished that the feedback has been so good.

JAMES

Are you astonished in one sense because it was such an easy journey to reach a professional stage?

MEREDITH

Yes, absolutely – to reach a point where it’s going to be produced by a professional theatre. Yeah. That’s astonishing to me. So what does that tell you? I guess you should write what you know.

JAMES

How much do you credit the workshop? Because it was a wonderful ensemble – right – it just seemed to really work well.

MEREDITH

Yes, I had a bunch of superstars – fantastic actors – almost all of them young moms and then I had Shari Wattling and she’s a great director and a great dramaturge.

I also wanted to write a play with just female roles because the year before I put a play in and Glenda Stirling was at Lunchbox then and she said, “Wow four women up on stage – I love it! It didn’t make the cut this year but I really loved your play and I’d love to see all women up on stage.” And I said, “Yeah. I want to write good roles for women because I’m a woman and I’m an actor and I know how hard it is to find good roles.” So that was important.

But that process with Shari and the other actors was just gold because they gave me lots of things to think about. Lots of ideas. We discussed and talked about it at the table, and then I went home and thought about things they had said. When someone as talented as Myla Southward or Cheryl Hutton says, “I don’t know about that part – that’s a real harsh line or that falls flat with me…” and that’s the last thing you hear as you head out the door you think about that until bedtime. I trusted their opinions. These are talented artists. I was lucky to get that group.

That’s the dumb luck part. The dumb ass luck part that Vern Theissen talked about when he was talking about a career as a playwright in his workshop that we went to.

JAMES

So, so far, you’ve had a lot of dumb ass luck.

MEREDITH

I’ve had a lot of dumb ass luck man. I don’t know what’s going on? But I also think I got a lot of bad writing out of my system early on which feels good. When I look back on the classes I took with Clem Martini when I was taking my BFA at the U of C fifteen years ago I purged a lot of crappy writing off the top…kind of like the head on a beer, you know. I look back on some of that stuff and it just makes me laugh at how bad and self-involved it is – and how it’s not dramatic and I don’t care about structure. Or when I was trying to be funny – oh man, that’s painful. So, I feel like I purged a bit of that. And then to come back at it years later I was in a different place.

JAMES

You told me Clem encouraged you to write so he must have recognized something.

MEREDITH

Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. I mean I never did exceptionally well in his classes or anything but he’s a good teacher and a lot of the stuff he told me stayed with me. He told us about writing dialogue, about structure, and about the hero’s journey – and that stayed with me over the years and I’d think about it, you know, when I’d read a book, or watch a movie, and maybe that was because I was supposed to become a writer in the end.

JAMES

Are you able to picture what you want the future to be for you as a writer?

MEREDITH

I want to be writing of course. I would like to spend more time collaborating with other artists like we did that week when we did the workshop at Lunchbox. That’s when I’m at my best. Not when I’m on my own but when there’s a group of people around and we’re on the same creative page. You know not just writing in my own little office but being able to collaborate with other artists in order to make something you’ve created even better.

***

Book Club by Meredith Taylor-Parry

Directed by Shari Wattling

What happens at book club, stays at book club.

Jenny is the perfect wife and mother. At least that’s what her book club thinks until one day she disappears and they have to turn detective and follow her trail! This mad cap, adventure-filled romp, shines a light on the pressures of motherhood and the value of true friendship.

World Premiere at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary from February 8th to 27th, 2016 with the following cast and crew.

Cast

Lisa – Cheryl Hutton
Ellen – Anna Cummer
Mary – Kathryn Kerbes
Kathy – Kira Bradley
Jenny – Arielle Rombough

Creative Team

Playwright – Meredith Taylor-Parry
Director – Shari Wattling
RBC Emerging Director – Jenna Rogers
Stage Manager – Ailsa Birnie
Apprentice Stage Manager – Melanie Crawford
Scenic & Lighting Design – Anton de Groot
Costume Design – Dietra Kalyn
Sound Design – Allison Lynch

***

Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry

Meredith Taylor-Parry is a playwright based in Calgary, Alberta. Her play Survival Skills won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off Off Broadway by the 13th Street Repertory Company, NYC in April 2014. Her play Devices received a production in Week One of the New Ideas Festival at Alumnae Theatre in Toronto in March of 2015. Her most recent work, Book Club, was developed as part of the Suncor Energy Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary in 2014 and will receive a world premiere at Lunchbox in February 2016. Meredith is Co-Artistic Director of Bigs and Littles Theatre Society and also enjoys writing and performing for young audiences.

You can contact Meredith at LinkedIn by clicking the link above or by email at: mtaylorparry@gmail.com

***

Book Club was part of the Suncor Energy Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre in June of 2014 where it received a workshop and reading.

Cast

Lisa – Brieanna Blizzard
Ellen – Myla Southward
Mary – Kathi Kerbes
Kathy – Cheryl Hutton
Jenny – Arielle Rombough

Creative Team

Playwright – Meredith Taylor-Parry
Director/Dramaturge – Shari Wattling
Assistant Dramaturg – Jacqueline Russel

Setting

The action takes place over a few hours in Lisa’s home, at a male strip club, outside a tattoo parlour, in a rough part of town, and outside an airport.

Synopsis

When Jenny is a no show on Book Club night the mommies start to worry. When she sends them a text to tell them she has booked a flight to Italy, they really get frantic. The group heads out on the town to track down their friend and hopefully talk some sense into her. This is a play about motherhood, from the stress of competitive parenting to the beauty of a good girlfriend who will help you get through it.

Lunchbox Theatre

Interview Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry – Part One: Survival Skills

Posted on January 26, 2016September 3, 2023 by James Hutchison

Survival Skills by Meredith Taylor-Parry won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off Off Broadway by the 13 Street Repertory Company, in New York City in April 2014.

“You want to write the kind of play where people are going to go home and talk about it, and think about it, and talk about themselves a little bit. You know, my God, if it got people to think about their own mortality a little bit, how could that be a bad thing? We all run around scared to talk about it, but we’re fascinated by it at the same time. The idea that we’re mortal. Just to have that discussion opened up wouldn’t hurt.”

Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry Survival Skills — Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry – Photograph by James Hutchison

Her most recent work, Book Club was developed as part of the Suncor Stage One Festival at Lunchbox Theatre and will receive a world premiere at Lunchbox in February.

I sat down with Meredith, while her four-month-old Beagle Tucker, lay happily nearby chewing puppy toys, to talk with her about Survival Skills and Book Club, as well as her writing process.

***

JAMES HUTCHISON

When you go to a play what is it you go for? What is it you hope to get out of it?

MEREDITH TAYLOR-PARRY

I guess I want to be moved emotionally, always. I like Opera. I always write while I listen to Opera. I want to be moved. I like the tragic. I like stories where you watch people getting put through the wringer. Watching characters go through hell and then some. And I like stories and plays with some expression of hope at the end. That’s very important. It doesn’t need to be wrapped up perfectly, but just something.

JAMES

Tell me about the reason you wrote Survival Skills.

MEREDITH

Well, my Dad committed suicide in two thousand and two after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I always knew that I wanted to write about it. I never thought about writing a novel – I always thought it would be a play.

JAMES

How difficult was it to put that out into the world? Because that’s a very personal thing.

MEREDITH

It was difficult, but when an experience like that happens to you – or at least my experience is – you’re compelled to tell that story over and over and over again.

And I’ve heard some people say, yeah but some people never want to talk about it again – but that wasn’t me. I was compelled to tell that story to friends – to grief groups –I’m just compelled to share it. I don’t know how many times my mom and I would get on the phone after it happened and we’d end up retelling that day – the actual event – when we found the suicide note – when we called the police – when my brother went out to look at the body that afternoon.

And I originally thought the play was going to open with that scene, but then I went to a Playworks Ink Conference in 2011 and I signed up early and got into Daniel MacIvor’s workshop. And he started the workshop by reading the scene you’d submitted. And he’s a pretty fantastic actor and he did all the different parts. I had my sister there, my brother there, my mother in the scene, and the character that represented me. We were all there and he just read through that first scene from beginning to end and when he finished – it was silent and he said, “That’s a hell of a way to start a play. People discovering a suicide note.”

And I went, “Yeah, yeah I guess it is. I wasn’t really thinking about that.”

He said, “We’re going to end the scene right here where your brother hangs up the phone and I want you to write the next scene.”

And I wrote the next scene and that became the first scene of the play because I took his advice – that is a hell of a way to start a play. But I think I needed to write the suicide scene first because that was the hardest scene to write – bar none – and to go back and remember those moments in specific detail.

JAMES

How much do you credit that workshop with moving forward on the play?

MEREDITH

Huge. He looked at me and said, because I had some humour in there, “Meredith, any play that can bring levity to the topic of death needs to be written.” He said, “I myself am terrified of the medical system. I’m not afraid of dying – I’m terrified about becoming a patient of the medical system.”

And here’s this man who has written all these beautiful plays with all this fabulous experience and wisdom but at the same time he’s a really good teacher too. He really has the right touch. And I think he just knew the right thing to say to help keep me going. He also made us promise, before we left the workshop, to send him the first draft by a certain date. And I did, because it’s Daniel MacIvor, right. I wasn’t not going to do it. I was two weeks late, but it made me finish it.

JAMES

You worked on the play for a couple more years and then entered it into the New Plays of Merit Contest in 2013 and won. What was it like getting the phone call that the play had won?

MEREDITH

That’s what my dream was up to that point. That someone was going to phone me up and tell me that I was good enough to win a contest. And I felt really good about it because it was New York. Because to me that was the place where all the good playwrights go. So, that was a real shot in the arm – no question. I felt pretty good about that – but I was stunned.

JAMES

What was it like to go see your play on stage?

MEREDITH

I vowed that I wasn’t going to be critical of my work because I don’t know if this is ever going to happen to me again. The idea of going to New York to see your play – Off Off Broadway in a little old theatre with a little old 92 year old Broadway performer running it. I mean this theatre had a lot of history. Tennessee Williams’ plays were performed there. And I thought, don’t ruin it by sitting there thinking about all the things that are wrong with your play. It wasn’t perfect, and I still think there are things that can be improved about the play, but I just vowed I was going to go and enjoy it.

JAMES

It’s interesting to me because there’s a certain completion to the journey. From the experience of your father having committed suicide, to writing the script, to winning the contest, to getting it produced. How you would sum up the whole experience as you were watching the production with your family?

MEREDITH

Well the first word that popped into my mind was surreal, and the second thing was how much I enjoyed the performances, and how much the actors brought to it. I just vowed I was going to go and enjoy it and I wasn’t going to worry about my family as far as taking care of them or worry about their reactions to it either. But you know, I also worked through a lot of stuff with that play.

When dad was suspecting a bad diagnosis – this was three days before he completed suicide – I phoned his room at the Moncton Hospital from Calgary. And he said, “Oh they’re going to do some tests and things.” Because at first they thought it might be a bowel infection and a reaction to antibiotics. But there was a moment where he hesitated on the phone and in my mind I wondered what was he was going to say next. To me there was something that he meant to say and tell me. Like he opened his mouth to say it and it didn’t come out and I wondered if it was, “Listen if it’s a bad diagnoses this is what I’m going to do.” But he didn’t say anything, and I heard this kind of breath, or hesitation, and I wondered, and wondered, and wondered about that afterwards.

And then I thought, well what would you have done if he had said, you know, this is not going to go well…would I have suspected…because we knew his philosophical stance on end of life. He always said, “If I ever got a bad diagnosis that would be it.” But it’s a leap in your mind to hear those words and really imagine your father actually doing that.

So I thought, in my state of mind, what would I have done? I probably would have called mom and told her not to leave him for a minute. And then there’s a part of you that would have said, “Okay – whatever you need – I’ll do it – I’ll help you.”

And I did end up inadvertently helping him complete the act by flying to the Maritimes, because when my mother came to pick me up at the airport that’s when he completed. So I felt complicit in that, and that bothered me for a long time, even though it was inadvertent. It was a window of opportunity, and he took it, and I provided that. So, in a way I helped whether I wanted to or not.

I changed the play so that the character who plays me actually does make the decision to fly home to get her mother out of the house so that her father will have the window of opportunity very knowingly not inadvertently.

JAMES

Dramatically that’s a good choice.

MEREDITH

Dramatically it was a hell of a lot better choice than what really happened.

JAMES

Because then the character is active.

MEREDITH

Yes.

JAMES

What do you think your dad would think of this play?

MEREDITH

Wow. I just think he’d be horrified, because he was such a private person. I had to struggle past that a little bit because he’d be so horrified that I laid it all out. But you know what? Whatever form – and I do believe there is some kind of spiritual form that he takes now – I don’t think he has those same opinions any more.

And after he was gone, I pretty quickly said this is more about me than it is about him. This is more about us. And that’s how I was able to write it. I was lucky, because my family wasn’t upset. But dad would have been. I think for sure. But I wouldn’t have had to write it – you know what I mean – unless it had happened.

JAMES

Was it cathartic for your family in some ways?

MEREDITH

Maybe in some ways. I sat right beside my mom and my aunt and I could feel the seat shaking because they cried and cried and they laughed too, but there was a lot of tears you know. I know that my aunt and mom told me they sat up all night in the hotel room talking about it. My brother said, “Man it’s weird to see your life up on stage like that.” But it was probably not as cathartic for them as it was for me

JAMES

What are your hopes for the story?

MEREDITH

I would love to see it produced again, of course. Published and produced. Those are the things that I’m looking for with all my plays. I don’t really want them to just sit stagnant. You want to write the kind of play where people are going to go home and talk about it, and think about it, and talk about themselves a little bit. You know, my God, if it got people to think about their own mortality a little bit, how could that be a bad thing? We all run around scared to talk about it, but we’re fascinated by it at the same time. The idea that we’re mortal. Just to have that discussion opened up wouldn’t hurt.

***

Next week, in Part Two, I talk with Meredith about her play Book Club, and its upcoming production at Lunchbox Theatre.

***

Meredith Taylor-Parry Survival Skills - Survival Skills Poster

Survival Skills by Meredith Taylor-Parry

A father takes his life. The family gathers to mourn. Only one saw the body. Only one knows what really happened.

Winner: 2013 New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest

Premiered at 13th Street Repertory – NYC April 3 – May 1, 2014, with the following cast and crew.

Directed by Leanora Lange

Cast

Kathleen – Aimee Thrasher
Annalise – Kristen Busalacchi
Eliza – Mary Ruth Baggott
Oscar – Jason Kirk
Len – Danny Sauls

Crew

Stage Manager – Alex Bishop
Properties Assistant – Aimee Thrasher
Dramatrug – Kurt Hollender
Producer – Sandra Nordgren

***

Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry

Meredith Taylor-Parry is a playwright based in Calgary, Alberta. Her play Survival Skills won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off Off Broadway by the 13th Street Repertory Company, NYC in April 2014. Her play Devices received a production in Week One of the New Ideas Festival at Alumnae Theatre in Toronto in March of 2015. Her most recent work, Book Club, was developed as part of the Suncor Energy Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary in 2014 and will receive a world premiere at Lunchbox in February 2016. Meredith is Co-Artistic Director of Bigs and Littles Theatre Society and also enjoys writing and performing for young audiences.

You can contact Meredith at LinkedIn by clicking the link above or by email at: mtaylorparry@gmail.com

***

Survival Skills by Meredith Tyalor-Parry – Synopsis

“He saw a window of opportunity.”

A man diagnosed with terminal cancer commits suicide, leaving his family behind to struggle with the aftermath. Our journey begins 20 years later as Annalise and her sister sit at their dying mother’s bedside. The daughters are compelled to relive with the audience the horrible days following their father’s death when those closest to him came together to mourn and try to understand his choice. The play moves between past and present.

Their father’s decision is a controversial one. It was terribly painful for his wife and children to experience such a sudden, violent loss. But as we watch the sisters sit with their mother we begin to understand the motives behind his action. Is the choice to let death come in its prolonged and often agonizing way any less traumatic for those involved? Should we have the right to choose?

As in any time of family crises, personalities clash and sibling rivalries are revisited. Annalise’s frustration grows as her father is both accused of being a coward and applauded as hero. Finally she reveals an awful secret; her father needed her help. It is only by sifting through the memories that haunt her, that she will find forgiveness.

New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest

New Works of Merit is an international playwriting contest developed in 2003 to bring works of social significance to the general public.

13th Street Repertory Company

The 13th Street Repertory Company, founded in 1972 by Artistic Director Edith O’Hara, provides a place for actors, directors, playwrights, and technicians to develop their craft in a caring, nurturing, professional environment.

Link to The Hemingway Solution Parts Unknown, and Anthony Bourdain

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