Umbrella Talk with Daniel Karasik

It seems like I've known Daniel forever. You name an event in the Toronto independent theatre landscape and he's there. I get amazed when I see all he has accomplished at such a young age. Not a surprise since he's so damn talented. You can find him on twitter @TangoCo


A Little More About Daniel Karasik

Daniel Karasik is a writer, director, and actor. Most active as a playwright, he has developed and presented new drama at many of Canada’s leading theatres, including Tarragon Theatre, Factory Theatre, the Canadian Stage Company, Touchstone Theatre, and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His plays have been seen in Toronto, New York, Vancouver, North Carolina, and regularly in translation in Germany. A recent grand prize winner of the CBC Literary Award for Fiction and Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award, he is the author of a new poetry collection, Hungry (Cormorant Books), and two books of plays: The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee and The Crossing Guard and In Full Light (Playwrights Canada Press). He also helms the Toronto-based theatre company Tango Co., through which he has developed many of his plays, including The Biographer, running from May 2-19. See thebiographerplay.com for more info.



What do you drink on opening night?
Nothing at all before the show, since I’m terrified that once the show starts I’ll have to pee. After I’m allowed to pee again, I’ll usually have a beer.

Who would direct the coolest production of one of your plays?
Alan Dilworth, who’s directing a breathtakingly cool production of my play The Biographer right now. Think Bergman fused with Fellini fused with the best of German theatre’s formal adventurousness and English theatre’s sensitivity to language. May 2-19! www.thebiographerplay.com.

What scares you? What can't you write about?
What doesn’t scare me! I do it all anyway, though. As far as writing goes, I prefer the terror of vulnerability to the tedium of concealing vulnerability. I guess that’s a way of saying I like to write about the stuff I think I couldn’t possibly write about. Lately I do, anyway.

What do you want to write about that you haven't yet?
I want to write about love and sex like Mary Gaitskill writes about love and sex. With that kind of insight, subtlety, surprise. This probably won’t and shouldn’t happen, since I’m not Mary Gaitskill. Still, it’s something to almost though not quite aspire to.

If someone was to write a play about your life, what genre would it be? (eg. comedy, tragedy, melodrama, horror)
Is “Woody Allen” a genre?

How do you deal with praise? With criticism?
Gratefully and skeptically. In both cases.

Where would you like your work to be produced?
The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, the Royal Court Theatre and Bush Theatre in London, and the Atlantic Theatre Company and Public Theatre in New York.

Where do you write? Pen or keyboard?
I write in a corner of my bachelor apartment, sometimes in the corner of a coffee shop near my place, very occasionally in the corner of a more distant coffee shop. My main requirement, obviously, is a corner. Keyboard for narrative, usually. Sometimes pen for poetry.

What would you like academics to write about your work in 50 years?
I gather that Harold Bloom has called Beckett the most authentic writer of the last century. I like that a lot and don’t really know what it means. It’d be cool if critics many years from now would say the same of my work. I still wouldn’t know what it means, but I’m sure I’d enjoy it.

What inspires you?
Uncertainty. Craving.

#theatrekegger

#Theatrekegger is a terribly deceiving trending topic, wtf Toronto. I was so stoked to do a kegstand on stage.
— Julian D'Souza (@juliandsouza) January 29, 2013

You may have seen this hashtag trending last night. Theatre kegger was an invite to Tina Rasmussen's house to meet other "social media influencers" (nice to still be considered one) and talk about this season of World Stage.

She talked about audience engagement, active participation and the importance of seeing the art we create in Toronto in a world context. She has always believed that it's important to import the best of the world to inform our work, as well as export the work we are creating here.

The season is very exciting. I like that there's also a piece that looks at the similarities between sports and art,  a passion of mine. Also nice to see Tina continuing her connection with Australia. Honestly, who else would have come up with this?

But the biggest takeaway from last night? I covet her apartment, especially the toilet.

Umbrella Talk with Chloë Whitehorn

I first found out about Chloë by falling in love with her play Love Virtually at the Toronto Fringe. Lucky for her, I was on the best of fringe jury and convinced my fellow jurors to see it. Then we met up at the fringe tent and it turns out she's a lot of fun to hang out with. I'm so happy to have her here. You can find her on twitter @fishbowlmuse.


A Little More about Chloë Whitehorn

Chloë Whitehorn is a playwright, actor, and underwater photographer. Her plays include Love, Virtually (Best of Fringe, Toronto 2011), The Frank Diary of Anne, Verona Heights, AEON: an evolution of sin, and The List, and have played in San Francisco, London, Kingston, Selby, and Toronto. Chloë’s work often examines taboo moralities, tragic love, and the licentious desires and imaginative reasoning of human beings.

Her latest play The Deepest Trench will be presented as part of the Alumnae Theatre's New Ideas Festival in March. For more information on Chloe, visit her website: www.chloewhitehorn.com      




What do you drink on opening night?
White wine. I'm pretty animated and white wine tends not to stain.

Who would direct the coolest production of one of your plays?
Franco Dragone, Diane Paulus, Dominic Champagne.
The Cirque seems to find the most outrageously creative minds for their shows.

What scares you? What can't you write about?
Lost love. There's something about the intensity of that emotion and how viscerally we feel it's absence when it's gone. I think that's why so much of my work involves someone finding the one person they want to be with and then for some reason not being able to be with them. Whether it's because the person is dead, or their brother... I imagine the hardest thing is loving someone you're not supposed to love.

I don't think I've been at this long enough to say there's something I "can't write about". Perhaps something that I feel isn't my story to tell? Although even then, I'd have a different perspective to offer. It might suck, but I could try. I mean, I'm an only child but that didn't keep me from writing about sibling incest.

What do you want to write about that you haven't yet?
My mom. The mothers in my plays tend to be portrayed in a negative light but my mother was the most incredible person I've ever known, and I really want to write something that reflects that. One of the last things my mom said to me was to "write her well". That is a lot of pressure.

I've recently started working on something though that I think will honor her memory appropriately. It's called Clarissa on her Deathbed and it's about an eleven year old girl dealing with the recent death of her mother. It's been difficult to work on, especially since I tend to write in public spaces and generally people get concerned when they see someone crying in the corner of a coffee shop.

If someone was to write a play about your life, what genre would it be? (eg. comedy, tragedy, melodrama, horror)
It probably wouldn't be a play. Quirky characters who have interesting moments but without real purpose don't make a play. Or so people keep telling me.

It'd probably be an interpretive dance. Or a silent film. Or a silent interpretive dance film.

How do you deal with praise? With criticism?
Not well, with either I think. I'm still learning. I tend to brush off praise without really taking it in, and anything negative seems to stay with me for a really long time. I'd like to be able to learn from both, but I think that's just going to take more exposure to it all.

Where would you like your work to be produced?
I love the idea that something I write could be seen and heard by someone halfway across the world and affect them/move them/make them angry/make them think.

In the foreseeable future though I'd just love to have my work produced across Canada in theatres run by people who haven't been to my house for board game night. Although by the time the show goes up I'll definitely have invited them over to play.

Where do you write? Pen or keyboard?
Coffee shops. I like the constant flow of people around me. I start with pen until I have enough that I think I'll start to forget what I meant to say when I can't read my handwriting, then I switch to typing.

What would you like academics to write about your work in 50 years?
Well, in theory I'll still be alive in 50 years, so hopefully nothing that'll make me cry.

Things that sound pompus coming from me, but not when written by academics: "Chloë Whitehorn's work captured the essence of her generation while appealing to a wide-array of audiences and challenging them to think beyond society's boundaries."

Also, that it was the most lucrative intimate theatre of all time. That'd be awesome.

What inspires you?
People inspire me. We're so messed up. And the more messed up we are, the more interesting our stories. We learn really early on that we're supposed to present to the world this mask of this put-together package, a santitized view of who we are and who we should be. I like to peer behind that mask. My characters are like the juice concentrate of what's behind all those masks. Add 3 cups of water and you get a real person. Add instead a cup and a half and give them a megaphone and you get someone who gives an audience a perspective on a piece of a world they think they know in a way they've never seen it before.

Umbrella Talk with Jonathan Fournier

A big thank you to Jonathan, who gave me this over a month ago and has patiently waited for me to post it. You can find him in the twitterverse at @JonFour


A Little More About Jonathan Fournier

Jonathan Fournier is a Montreal-based writer, director, actor and sound designer. He is a communication studies graduate from Concordia University (class of 2010) and he continues to take classes with ASM Performing Arts, Montreal Improv and the QDF. He has written/directed/produced the plays The Boy and the Wrapper and Miner Inconvenience. As an actor and "collaborative creator", he has worked with Chip Chuipka and Chad Dempski. Jonathan has several other scripts in various stages of development. As a sound designer, Jonathan has done recording and editing work for his own productions, as well as for promotional material used by Tableau D’Hote theatre.

Jonathan has no specific show to plug right now, but he is aiming to have a production ready for the 2013 Montreal Fringe Festival.


What do you drink on opening night?
My celebratory drink is a chocolate milkshake! Not much a fan of alcohol.

Who would direct the coolest production of one of your plays?
Mike Nichols

What scares you? What can't you write about?
Poverty. That's a subject I don't know how to approach in my work... not yet, at least.

What do you want to write about that you haven't yet?
Outer space, supermen, gods...

If someone was to write a play about your life, what genre would it be? (eg. comedy, tragedy, melodrama, horror)
Black comedy

How do you deal with praise? With criticism?
I think I take them well. I don't seek out praise, but it's great when I get it. I try to remember things I've been praised on in the past and see how I can apply them to my new work. With criticism, my number 1 rule is "If you get a specific critique from one person, they might be wrong. If multiple people critique the same thing, you should probably listen to them".

Where would you like your work to be produced?
Hmmm... I don't have any one particular venue on my "to-do" list. I guess the Centaur Theatre (in Montreal) would be fun. I think the work should dictate where you produce it. Some plays are better suited to intimate spaces than giant halls.

Where do you write? Pen or keyboard?
I do brief notes or writing exercises with pens, but mostly I'm a computer guy. I write outlines on my phone (good for when I'm on the bus) and then write the actual script on my laptop (where I use stageplay template on my Final Draft software).

What would you like academics to write about your work in 50 years?
That it was interesting. That it was fun. The in 2010-2020 Montreal, I was producing work the likes of which no one else in Montreal was producing.

What inspires you?
People, the news, movies, music, friends, solitude. You need to be open. Inspiration can hit you in the strangest places, at the strangest times. When I have trouble being inspired by myself, I take a writing, acting or improv class. Those environments are always good inspiration kickstarters.