» Savannah Walling
Interview with Savannah Walling conducted by Joerg Esleben, Vancouver, 5 June 2019
Transcribed from an audio recording by Ecem Yucel, edited by Savannah Walling and Joerg Esleben
Joerg Esleben (JE): Why was the Brecht in the Park series created in the first place? Why was that initiated?
Savannah Walling (SW): So, what I’m sharing is what I have in some of the documentation because I wasn’t part of the original forming of it. But it was, to my understanding, to bring exciting theatre into the communities, free performances by Torchlight, uniting spectacle performance with political theatre, was part of that goal, and to unite the Brecht text with adult oriented community-based events; all very exciting. A hybrid performance style rooted in community, one of the original goals, and bringing together professional artists, celebration artists, community music ensembles had been that founding goal. And to take theatre in a way from elitist gaze to more broad public. So, those are my understandings, and then I had been part of one of the earlier Brecht in the Park productions, The Threepenny Opera, as a member of the Razom Sestre Balkan Choir, of which I’d been a part for many years.
JE: So, that was your first participation in the series.
SW: That’s right, in terms of a personal participation.
JE: Right, and then Vancouver Moving Theatre (VMT) joined the Brecht in the Park series formally with The Good Person of Setzuan.
SW: Yes, The Good Person of Setzuan. And I ended up doing that because I had really enjoyed participating in the previous Brecht in the Park production as a participant singer and I’ve been excited by performances that I’d seen in the Brechtian repertoire, and especially the 1973 Net City Rise and Fall of Mahagonny. That was done not far from this neighborhood, in the Ironworkers Building with composer Douglas Dodd, and I’d been really excited by seeing the 1931 film The Threepenny Opera. I had studied with my singing teacher songs from Die Sieben Todsünden, and I’d been reading a lot about Brecht and Kurt Weill and theatre history over the years, and accounts of their collaborations. One account that had really stayed with me was Otto Friedrich’s Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin the 1920s (1972). So, the creative territory was theatrically exciting to me, and so, Ruby Slippers invited us – Vancouver Moving Theatre -into the producing partnership. This took place when Vancouver Moving Theatre and Ruby Slippers had offices in the same building. Ruby Slippers had a desire to bring an already successful event to a new level of professionalism. They were interested in our experience, skills around spectacle, physical theatre, clowning, stilt dancing, mask, puppet, pyro dancing, live music, and all that. My understanding is that their previous partner Public Dreams had been pulling out, maybe the co-producing partnership was too big an undertaking for them, but I’m not certain about that. Public Dreams were the celebration artists that had partnered in the first two Brecht in the Park productions.
JE: And so, was there a marked shift from The Threepenny Opera to The Good Person of Setzuan?
SW: Yes, there was a very big shift, yes. At that time, our company had been on the touring road for years. As a result, we weren’t that well-known in the theatre community. In addition, we’d come out of dance and music into the theatre world. So, it was exciting to have theatre colleagues reaching out to us. One of the developments that shaped the future of Brecht in the Park happened as we entered into the collaboration with Ruby Slippers: around that time Katrina Dunn was stepping out of her role as a co-director of Ruby Slippers into taking on a new role as artistic director of Touchstone Theatre. There were big implications from that shift, in terms of the Canadian equity actor requirements related to the scale of theatre production, the requirements of PACT, the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, of which Touchstone is a member, but Ruby Slippers and Vancouver Moving Theatre were not. This development brought in new complexities and additional layers of regulations and costs, and that in turn limited the number of community performers, participants, or ensembles we were allowed to involve. So, that in itself changed the nature of Brecht in the Park productions and the nature of the performance ensemble. In contrast to Public Dream Society, which was founded by artists who have strong roots in visual art, Terry and I were coming into the collaboration as artists with roots in the performing arts and dance. Live music had been a foundational aspect of our art practice. We had also been working with stilts, masks, and other physical extensions to the human body. So, these were perspectives and experiences that we brought into the creative collaboration.
JE: A new quality brought to the next show. So then, can you say something about how and why was this play, The Good Person of Setzuan, chosen for the third installment of the series?
SW: I don’t wholly remember … I think that they had already chosen the play when we came on, but my memory isn’t perfect there. I do remember that we thought it was a really good match for the city at that time, and that it was a good way to unite research on what was going on in 1920s historical Setzuan, and 1930’s Berlin with Vancouver’s 20th Chinatown, and with contemporary themes and issues in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood that was having challenges of being labelled as a kind of low income – “stereotyped” is a better word – as a kind of low income, ghetto of drug users, poverty, hopelessness. The Downtown Eastside is a community in which there is poverty, in which there has emerged since we produced The Good Person of Setzuan, an open-air drug market, and where there are inner city challenges related to all that. It’s also a very socially and culturally diverse neighborhood, one where residents stay for long periods of time, singles and families, etc. The Downtown Eastside is a very culturally rich neighborhood, and one in which all of its residents come from many different social economic backgrounds and who have been coming together in a variety of ways to combat the stereotypes, to present a more truthful, varied, and reflective picture of the neighborhood. So, that’s an important part of our interest in joining the Brecht in the Park project. I remember that we co-producers had decided to commission playwright John Lazarus to adapt the Santa Monica version of the script, which had been revised by Brecht & company during their exile in the USA. It had some scenes removed, some plots elements clarified, and then it introduced opium. So again, these were some of the interconnections. Those are some things I remember about the choice of the play and the adaptation.
JE: And did the production then fulfill the hope of making those connections in your view?
SW: I think the production definitely embedded those layers in terms of the content and stylistic choices in contexting what was brought around the play. If we were doing it again, could we go deeper? Yes.
JE: And this was an adaptation, right? Not just a translation?
SW: It was an adaptation, yes.
JE: So, with original elements to it presumably… did you remember what was added then in the textual adaptation?
SW: In terms of the storyline, I would have to go back and review it carefully. I don’t remember that. One element that I do remember, though, was that we decided to change the references from tobacco to coffee, because we felt that that had more of the same relevant resonance in the perceptions around tobacco during the 1930’s. And in fact, in the program guide we included historical contexting, references to caffeine and its role as one of those widely used drugs that did not impede the user’s capacity to hold a job.
JE: And would that have something to do with the vogue of coffee chains as well? I’m just wondering why you felt that coffee was the contemporary equivalent of tobacco…?
SW: In that tobacco now is carrying ... the physically damaging and life-threatening effects of tobacco are much more understood in the 21st century. Whereas coffee is assumed to be benign, and yet it has definite physical effects, side effects that are really difficult to withdraw from. And also, like tobacco, it is produced very cheaply and sold for greatly inflated prices. So, those are some of the reasons why we made that particular shift to adapt to a contemporary context.
JE: And so the Setzuan production also used elements of spectacle extensively then?
SW: Yes, we did, very much extensively.
JE: What kinds? What parts of the play did that concern mostly?
SW: I’m just thinking back a bit about the collaborative partnerships and how Touchstone and Ruby Slippers, Katrina and Diane, had focused primarily on working with the text-based scenes with the actors. They also – especially Katrina – led the run throughs, and technical and dress rehearsals. And we did have some of the songs by Paul Dessau that were part of this show, there were about five or six of them, sung by two singers who were involved in that staging of text-based scenes. And so, we co-directors were working with a concept that all four of us had developed around this fantastical, imaginary Setzuan-Vancouver 2028, bringing out the issues, consumerism, homelessness, addiction, the whole notion of being on the brink of environmental apocalypse, and seeing how we could find a Setzuan that was true for us in Vancouver. So that was something that all the directors were sharing, that perspective.
And then, VMT was interested in stylistic inspirations from Asia as well as from Europe. So, that’s some of what VMT was bringing into the palette of spectacle-related elements, too: live music, stilt characterizations, giant screen shadow theatre, pyrotechnics and fire dancing.
The place where I had a particularly meaningful role was collaborating with composer Joseph Pepe Danza in terms of developing original music. We had a score that was performed by four musicians upon taiko-style drums, oil drums, snare drums, Balinese gamelan, electrical guitar, flute, conch shells, trombone, horns, tempo bowls, chimes, thunder sheets.
JE: All played live by these four musicians?
SW: All played live by four musicians who were visible to the audience: Joseph Pepe Danza (composer), Laurie Lyster (also music coordinator), Terry Hunter and myself. And that music was serving, among other functions, as the voice of the gods, and of the environment itself. And then, we had the gods on stilts, who, from my spectacle director’s perspective, were being evoked from a dying Earth to protest against its exploitation by humans, gods who arrive for this last-ditch stand to save the planet. I had been really inspired by the stories of the 16th century Chinese novel by Wu Ch’eng-en Journey to the West, and other ancient stories where the gods have come to earth to give a warning to the humans. And from my spectacle director’s perspective, the survival of the gods is tied to the survival of the Earth, of human capacity for goodness. The play portrays a world spinning out of control, as a result of human actions, and that nature is in distress. If the gods maintain their position at the expense of the humans, the humans would be destroyed, the Earth would be destroyed. If the earth and humans all die, the gods will be destroyed. So, you know, from my perspective all their destinies and survival were dependent upon each other. And so, we - the composer and I - were thinking of music’s potential to bring the message-bearing gods, the world of the gods into the present, and of music’s potential to sonically embody the impending environmental apocalypse surrounding the play’s events, in addition to music’s functions as sound effects or musical numbers, etc.
And then, there was another spectacle element: a child Bunraku style puppet that we used, an artistic decision triggered by equity union regulations around engaging child actors. No, no, I now remember. The situation arose because one of the Good Person directors had accessed some funding from the Du Maurier Foundation. Because the Good Person production received funding from a tobacco-related organization, we were no longer allowed to bring an actor under the age of nineteen up on the stage. That is my memory. And so, this was an example of regulations limiting opportunities for community engagement, but then opening up an artistically exciting alternative: the use of a Bunraku style child-puppet.
Another spectacle element I was involved in was working with the giant screen shadow play element. We invited David Chantler, who works with Trickster Theatre in Calgary, to come and to help us develop a pool of thematically related material, etc. During the productions, the shadow screen elements increasing came “into play” as night fell, and then at the very end there was a five-minute finale, musical finale, shadow finale. The finale portrayed the gods’ ascent up into the sky, up off the screen, and included a metaphorical revisiting of the themes of the play and the earth’s approaching apocalypse. In our understanding – mine and the composer’s -, the music carried the narrative’s emotional through-line, a counterbalance to the spoken text.
JE: And what was the style of the music, or the styles? How would you characterize the music aside from the instruments that you listed?
SW: Well, we were certainly drawing upon a world music foundation. Joseph “Pepe” Danza is a composer from Uruguay who is a guitarist and percussionist who had worked with VMT on drum dancing for many years, with large Taiko-style drums on stands. He was also familiar with oil drumming styles, etc. And we were working with a small gamelan orchestra that VMT had brought back from Bali on one of our tours and that we had been composing and performing with over the years. The music provided its own South Asian subtext and stylistic elements, as well as sound effects, sounds of a cityscape, and a mood of impending apocalypse. Joseph Pepe Danza had a history of training, composing and performing in a variety of world music traditions, popular music forms and wind, string and percussion instruments. Lauri Lyster, a percussionist who worked with the Vancouver Symphony and world music groups, was one of the musicians. Terry and myself were the other two musicians. We had a history of having performed live music for other Vancouver Moving Theatre productions.
JE: And so, do you remember anything about the public reception of the Setzuan project in terms of audience responses, critical responses?
SW: Well, I don’t remember detailed responses at this point; what I do remember was that there was a strong enthusiasm and excitement that was generated, and a buzz around it. The production was really drawing audiences. All kinds of audiences were responding very strongly to it and were engaged by it. Our peers demonstrated their excitement in part by Jessie Richardson Theatre Award nominations and awards that the production received. There were a variety of some reviews, as well, media reviewers gave a feeling of the show and the energy it generated. But at that time we weren’t soliciting individual responses.
My feeling in retrospect about The Good Person of Setzuan is that it was a really fully fleshed production. It was well performed, thought provoking, entertaining, with a lot of humor, lots of visual spectacle and powerful music, etc. You know, I’m thinking, there are places we could’ve gone deeper into theme and content, and that the spectacle elements could’ve been more deeply embedded throughout. It was very exciting to be part of creating and performing the music and to approach the script with an eye to orchestrating or shaping all the original musical elements throughout the script and scenes. Artistically, that part was really an exciting piece of the whole experience.
I was also working with the great performers that portrayed the gods. This included providing them with stilt training, getting them up on stilts, comfortable on stilts, and able to work as an ensemble on stilts; and to put in the seeds of possibility for emergent physical characterizations to work with a three-dimensionality and a physicality, so that they had a sense of how… when you’re working in the open air and the audience is all around you, how to direct your energy, and set up lines of connection, between yourself and the other performers, between yourself and the audience.
JE: So, the audience was 360 degrees?
SW: They weren’t 360 degrees, but they were… there was a surround kind of a… I have a map somewhere, but I don’t remember where it is right now… It’s here, yes. So, the audience was around this way. The musicians were here, with the shadow screen in another part of the set. Also, the gods were coming on and offstage with their entrances, so it was a challenge for them to keep or establish connections with the audience and with each other. There was also a tension that was present between a director specifying to these actors choreographic or staging directions, but at the same time the three people performing the gods were highly skilled improvisors trained in the anarchic art of clowning. So, there were these improvisational interactions that were going on between themselves, or with the audience, and this dance between planned and spontaneous, control and anarchy. And that dynamic tension was what spectators were responding to with excitement. That dynamic tension between the directors’ specificity and the actors inspired improvisational riffs that heightened the gods’ distinct identity and perspective as a commentary upon the play’s human characters. While the music infused other layers of emotional and spiritual commentary, or environmental commentary onto the play’s narrative.
JE: So, a very complex layering of artistic elements.
SW: Yes, and the music really did give this visceral, emotional weight to the production. I know that it was a challenge; we were coming with really different aesthetics, the three directors …
JE: Different companies…
SW: … and both the two directors that were working with alternating scenes with the actors, so there might be a different interpretation, and then myself coming from a very different, more collaborative way of working in a rehearsal studio with artists, etc. Also, I personally would’ve preferred more audience interaction, for example, as part of the artistic palette. But I was really struck by… we had a very interesting consultation, a script analysis with visiting theatre artist Eugene Lion (Montreal-based) before we co-producers began the process. And he had said afterwards that, from everything that he could tell, it was an uncommon collaborative achievement, because, he said, “usually one strong director on a show is sufficient to sink it, two are a guarantee of disaster, more than that makes failure an exponential inevitability. When I left you in Vancouver, I could’ve sworn Good Person was headed for hell; that you were all able despite the odds and the provocations to make your collective talents more operative than your individual differences is a genuine and singular triumph.” I think that’s a really good description of what in fact took place despite the very different perspectives and all the challenges that we were navigating.
JE: Is that because those differences were primarily artistic, not related to the social or political aspects?
SW: In part, I’d say that we shared perspectives in terms of the socio-political territory. There were differences around the spiritual territory of what the gods represent, and also what they represented for Brecht and Weill. What they represented for these very different artists among ourselves; from the extremely secular to ... In the play’s world, the sacred and the secular interweave, and are both present. But I’d say it’s like we were navigating through all these different perspectives, different types of performer training, different types of arts disciplines with which we engaged. In this particular production, somehow, they fused in a really good, supportive, and exciting manifestation of the play. Even despite the human imperfections and bumps on the creative road.
JE: Which are what make theatre interesting.
SW: Yes. So, those are some of the reflections about…
JE: About Setzuan, yes. Are you ready to make the transition to Sucker Falls?
SW: Yes, I think I’m ready to transition to Sucker Falls.
JE: So, how was that project conceived as the next one in the series? Why? I suppose that the choice of Mahagonny was made, was it? And then the idea to do an Indigenous adaptation of it.
SW: It was an evolutionary process.
JE: So that wasn’t a kind of brainstorming outcome?
SW: Ah, how do I say it … I’d say we had a strong interest in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. I don’t remember the other directors’ reasons for a particular interest in that production. I know that I did because it’s been a long-standing personal favourite. I’ve loved the integration of new music with a popular edge and theatre, dramatic action. We felt that the themes of this story were really relevant; this whole parable, the urban frontier city, posed between paradise and apocalypse ...
JE: … was relevant particularly again for Vancouver?
SW: Hugely relevant to the city, to Vancouver’s evolution, it’s a relatively new urban city within the last 150 years. It sits on unceded Indigenous land, and there are three First Nations within and surrounding it. But these realities were not yet acknowledged at the time that we were embarking upon this project. But there was, an emergent awareness - Vancouver’s history as a frontier, free-for-all city rooted on harvesting and destroying resources and on real estate sales. In this case, real estate sales of land that nobody “owned”, if you ignored the reality that the land was unceded and unpaid for. The play’s portrayal of an ethically confused capitalistic society whose value system was collapsing was deeply relevant to our city’s situation. Brecht’s play has a lot of references to immigrant-founded cities - urban problems, irresponsible consumption, social violence, gambling, prostitution. All of this has been part of Vancouver’s invisible underground economy from the city’s founding. The play itself is investigating, the impacts of hundreds of years of capitalism rising, new frontiers, conquests, surging expansion without limits, questions of what makes up a good society, and how a lot of those calls for revolutions for a better future have had disastrous consequences. So, all these elements gave the story relevance for our time and place and an exciting fit with this kind of open air, accessible aesthetic. The desire for an Indigenous adaptation also came in part, for Terry and myself, from a desire to better reflect the cultural diversity of our inner city neighborhood. I think we had an instinct that collaboration with Indigenous collaborators would be of growing importance in our art practice. For over 15 years, this has been the reality. But as a group – Katrina, Diane, Terry and I - we had the interest, and the desire to bring in a First Nations’ perspective, an Indigenous storytelling perspective on a European imported work of art, and the events of the story. We felt that that approach would resonate with this time and this place - at a time following the closing of Indian residential schools when Indigenous people were arriving in the city, looking for training, jobs and affordable homes. I think at one point we were wondering whether Tomson Highway might be available, but that didn’t prove to be the case. I don’t remember other artists we may have considered, but Terry and I did remember having seen Drew Hayden Taylor’s play Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock performed in Toronto when VMT was on one of our tours, and so, we proposed the idea of Drew being the person to come in as an Indigenous playwright.
JE: And that was accepted fairly easily by the other collaborators?
SW: Yes, after discussion, all of us doing a bit of research on this. But the plan made sense. There was some back and forth to go, before we came to an agreement that would work for him, for his agent, for the project, and for the co-producers.
JE: Do you, from your perspective, remember how he responded? He told me that at first he was reluctant because he hadn’t dealt with Brecht much at all, right?
SW: Exactly, totally. So, We thought this could be really exciting. But this was new territory; new for him, new for us to collaborate with an Indigenous playwright. Perhaps Katrina or Diane had worked with Indigenous playwrights before then. Terry and I had not. And it was new territory in this Indigenous encounter with Brecht.
JE: Yes. And so, what was the process, then, once those pieces were in place, the play, the adaptor, and the companies involved? What was the process of developing the production out of that? How did it unfold?
SW: One of the layers was the evolving of the script - sending stories and source material to Drew, Drew sending back an idea, meeting more to discuss. And then, when he actually began to write, a process of drafts coming, being reviewed and discussed by the co-writers, feedback given back to him, of which he’d take some but not all. The concept that he came up with, really exciting to us, was this notion of the appearance and collapse of a First Nations casino on a disputed land claim and the arrival of three outlaws – prospectors from the north. I just went “Yes!” – And that the casino was located in Anywhere, Canada, including here or anywhere else. At a certain point Drew also brought in the idea of the Wendigo spirit, this Cree Ojibway spirit of insatiable hunger and need who appears when things are spinning out of control. The Wendigo’s following the prospectors out of the North. Drew’s vision was exciting and made sense: a culturally specific fable about corruption, greed, consumerism, disconnection from land and loss of tradition, with social and moral implications for the larger society. He also proposed integrating extreme fighting, then illegal everywhere in Canada except on the Native reserves. So, this process of going back and forth between writer and co-directors was generating an evolving emergent script. At a certain point we had a script workshop, involving Rachel Ditor as dramaturg. I think that we flew Drew out from Toronto, to workshop the script with actors, and then him writing some more material, lots of back and forth.
JE: In your recollection, was he staying closer to the original at first, and then moving further away from it?
SW: Yes, absolutely. Embedding the Indigenous casino and the wendigo spirit took place early in the script’s development, and also the story-twist of Ladybird – the casino owner – in a family relationship with her side-kicks. I think all those changes represented a profound narrative shift, transforming the content into new creation, filtering themes and ideas through an indigenous perspective. There’s places he could’ve gone deeper and further in that process – with more time. Although the script went through many drafts, what we were presenting was really a first draft presentation of what could be realized. So, I’d say that the further and deeper he adhered to Indigenous-rooted story elements, the more distinctive his creation. And the places where he didn’t Indigenize as deeply, were less distinctive.
JE: Closer to Mahagonny style.
SW: Or that were not as deeply infused with his voice and an Indigenous perspective. For me, Drew’s creation was a new work inspired by an older play. But we knew that we all were navigating tricky territory.
JE: Tricky in what terms?
SW: Navigating the borderlands between adaptation and emergent new play. Well, at a certain point we had debated on whether to do the original Mahagonny or not before we made the decision to engage Drew. And at one point we realized it was beyond our resources to mount the original Mahagonny. And we were even more excited about the prospect of creating a radical re-visioning. We wondered, would we be able to do this as a commission working in a formal relationship, with the Brecht-Weill Foundation. We soon realized that the commissioning of an Indigenous perspective was not going to ‘fly’ with the foundation. And - for me - Drew’s emergent vision was irresistible.
If we revisited Drew’s script again, it would be great to engage with an Indigenous dramaturg, and an Indigenous director, as Drew brought twenty more years of life experience to the process. I think it would be really exciting to see the story fully fleshed and realized, whether in the form of a novel, or a theatre or film script. Because Sucker Falls was touching into really important and reverberant content, content for which Canada and we and Drew needed twenty more years of lived experience and the unravelling of colonial narratives to look Canada’s history in the face, and to reweave these stories with Indigenous perspectives.
JE: But then that’s always true with any historical juncture, right?
SW: Yes. And more true for some works than others. So, whereas with the Good Person, I feel like, yes, if we worked on it again, we could do a better job and in more depth, but I don’t feel that our adaptation of Good Person was as foundationally profound an artistic development and culture shift as Sucker Falls. Bringing back our version of Good Person twenty years later would be of less significance than bringing back Sucker Falls. This is because of what this country has been going through, and continues to move through – grappling with acknowledging buried histories, with decolonizing, conciliation and reconciliation, and what are the implications of “walking the talk”. 2019 is a whole other universe from 2001. I’ve been following Drew’s evolution as a writer, and following his books and productions, and witnessing the maturing of his voice and understanding as well. I’d love to seem him bring that lived experience to Sucker Falls and to move it forward again.
JE: So, what about the contributions of Vancouver Moving Theatre in particular to the Sucker Falls project?
SW: In addition to co-planning the production and contributing to dramaturgical and script development, I had specific responsibilities. I was overseeing music creation, working closely with composer and music director Ron Samworth and the Talking Pictures Ensemble. Talking Pictures had been part of The Threepenny Opera, so they were coming back. In my role as spectacle director, I also oversaw the development and evolution of the cannibal Wendigo spirit, the design, performance and characterization of that being as well as of the fire spirit. I worked with the performers to develop the physical characterizations and the physical and sonic vocabulary of these spirit beings. The physicality of the wendigo was enacted by Bessie Wapp. Its voice was expressed by vocalist Laura Crema and the orchestra. I also directed development and teaching of a simple drum dance choreography, building on rhythms composed by Ron. I also oversaw development of shadow choreography, shadow creator choreographic elements for Katrina and Diane to integrate or shape into the production. I oversaw and liaised around the pyrotechnics, including the ‘electric chair’, the gods’ visits, the destruction of the casino. These spectacle elements were my primary focus.
JE: You mentioned a fire spirit. That’s not in the script, so can you…?
SW: I think there are references to fire in the script.
JE: Oh, yes, sure.
SW: And so, those points are embodied in Sucker Falls by a stilt-dancingfire spirit. Embodied fire and moving with fire torches. That fire dancing element was part of our interpretation.
JE: And you also just alluded to the god figure. So, in the script there is a two-faced figure of god coming in the end, with a white face and an Indigenous face, holding the final reckoning of sorts. And I was wondering if you recall how that was done.
SW: Right, right. Do I remember how we did that? Manipulating flashlights aimed at the gods’ costume, we created mysterious moving lights. The light sources were physically manipulated to generate shifting shadows on the screen. The gods seemed to shrink, grow, shake, and move.
[from the 2001 script notes of Savannah Walling as spectacle director: The Wendigo’s greedy hands – giant shadow hands – reached for and devoured Carson. A clap of ‘thunder’ - the Wendigo turned to the screen, sees the two-faced god and flees. The two-faced God was manifested by projections of lights – lights bounding and shaking, fading up and down, and wildly zigzagging as the pace built. Finally igniting green and red fireworks. A fire-stilt dancer entered through the audience corridor, swinging burning fire torches. As the fire spirit lit fiery pillars and fire sculptures, Donne spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Wendigo arrived to lead off Donnie and Carson. A riot take place on the shadow screen until the Wendigo seemed to leap over a light onto flaming screen.]
JE: And so, the god was played by an actor?
SW: I don’t remember whether it took one or more actors to create the effect of a god manifested on the shadow screen as moving dancing lights rather than being enacted by live actors. Dramatic effects were generated by moving light sources and mirrors. [Reading from notes] “Q-Beam flashlights straight on as the gods stood up, the cut-outs being moved, mirrors the apocalyptic feel, the fireworks start to ignite, the god began spinning, somehow appeared to begin spinning and then moving faster and faster, growing, and shrinking, and then spinning off stage.”
JE: Ron Samworth told me that he recalls doing a musical accompaniment to all of this.
SW: Yes, that’s right. We had our music map that took us through the different sonic and environmental elements; Wendigo devouring music fading into the gods' arrival, the thunder, wind, shaking noises, instrumentals, music… the casino starting to burn this scene was driven by music.
JE: So, while we’re on the music, what do you recall about the specific music for this production, and the differences to Weill?
SW: Well, the orchestra included electric guitar, percussion, violin, and bass, a few Asian gongs, but mostly western instruments, plus large taiko-style drums for the drum dancing scene. Ron’s music score was rooted in popular music forms, idioms. There was an overture procession, there were character motifs, atmospheric sound effects, dramatic punctuation points, incidental music and songs, sonic environments creating the voices of the Wendigo, fire, and the gods, and of apocalyptic destruction. In addition to these functions, the live music, as in the Good Person, was evoking that non-verbal language of dreams and spirits, shadows, the unconscious, and that struggle for good and evil in the soul: layers of emotional content infusing So, that was part of another layer of that emotional content that it was bringing into the play.
The Wendigo was on three scales; a human scale, the stilt scale, and a kite scale.
JE: Kite scale meaning?
SW: Kite, a flown kite.
JE: Right. Bigger than the stilt scale?
SW: Well, it could fly higher. We also created Aurora Borealis-like effects on the shadow screen, synchronizing with the appearances of the gods. So these were some of the different ways of bringing to life elements of Drew’s story on stage and screen, providing sonic and visual excitement.
JE: You yourself have kindly suggested that I ask you about cultural challenges and responsibilities in the context of the project. Of course, I’m very curious to hear what you have to say.
SW: There were artistic differences we were navigating. I was really interested in utilizing audience corridors as a staging device and a dramatic platform – something VMT has done in many productions. (Inspired in part by the Kabuki device of the Hanamichi, a runway from the rear of the theatre to the stage). This staging technique treats the audience corridor as an extension of the stage and a dramatic platform: for highlighting important entrances and exits, for demonstrating the character’s essential nature and emotional state, and establishing rapport and intimacy with the audience. The audience corridor provides a transition for the character to move into the psychological area of the play, as they enter relationship to onstage characters and dramatic events. The corridor also offers opportunities to place some of the action in the midst of the audience. But for the most part, my collaborators were not interested in utilizing this staging technique for the Sucker Falls production. However, audience corridors were effectively utilized for the stilt-Wendigo’s entrances and exits.
We had challenges locating Indigenous actors who were strong singers. In the end we brought in some performers from other places in Canada, which increased the production costs. And there were a lot of the logistical challenges. For example, we had four weeks of a venue provided by the University of British Columbia out beyond the city limits. Then we were hit by a city-wide bus strike for weeks. It got very complicated to navigate the transportation challenges. We had a wet, cold June that totally rained out every performance at one of the venues. The rain alternative schedule confused the audiences. So, all these circumstance were affecting momentum and morale which was really too bad, disappointing.
I remember there were some unexpected complications in working with a character embodying an Indigenous spirit. Drew’s story featured a Wendigo spirit character: a terrifying giant cannibal who comes into being in winter, and is almost impossible to kill …people turn into Wendigos when they are starving, or they become gluttonous.People might dream of the Wendigo, or you’re bitten by it. And in the process, you lose your humanity, your judgement, your capacity for compassion and sorrow, because all that matters is your survival. The more they eat, the bigger they grow. The bigger they grow, the more they eat. Wendigo are said to appear whenever humans put their needs before the well-being of their families, or their communities, or other non-human beings. They’re said to be reborn today as multinational corporations; but with new names, and elegant clothing, and polished manners. Wendigos are fueled by unquenchable greed and they bring disaster. So, that’s the territory of this being that Drew wove into his story.
[At this point in the interview, Savannah Walling discussed a series of events during the creation of the production involving cultural sensitivities around the Wendigo character. Upon her request, this passage is omitted here due to cultural and privacy considerations.]
And so, in terms of unexpected responsibilities, this experience gave me a deeper understanding, an expanded understanding of a director’s responsibility in protecting and caring for the well-being of the cast; especially when navigating territories of cultural content, Indigenous cultural content, and Indigenous or other cultural ways of showing respect.
Another of the responsibilities I came to understand that I carried in working with the actors who were to embody the Wendigo spirit, was the need was to focus in the rehearsal process on their self-care, and protection, as well as strategies for going into and withdrawing from work, while embodying culturally specific characters, and engaging with the power of masks. So, these are some of the learnings that were coming forward while participating in creation and rehearsal of Sucker Falls.
Looking out for the for well-being of the actors is not typically seen as the director’s responsibility in a conventional contemporary theatre production. This responsibility is usually assigned to the stage manager, who has a responsibility of looking after the health, care, and physical well-being of the actors. So, this shift to focus on the quality of the communication between a director and the performers, in terms of the director’s responsibility emotional and spiritual well-being, in my experience this shift has emerged out of Indigenous collaborative contexts. This kind of awareness is starting to filter into other theatre contexts.
JE: So, that could maybe usefully bring us to the general area of responses to the production, and maybe we’ll start with the intra-cast responses. How did people in the cast respond to the project in your memory, other than these challenges you just outlined? The cast and the production team.
SW: It was a hard process in a lot of ways. There were times with a lot of laughter and fun, and there were times when some peoples’ ways of relieving stress made the process more stressful for others. So, whereas for some of the guys, boisterous horse play could be a stress reliever, for some of the women it was not. The cast came with really different trainings and acting approaches. Some actors had backgrounds in collaborative evolution of original work emphasizing process, digging into characterizations and story elements. That wasn’t part of this process, partly due to the open air setting, and the amount of material that need to be staged in a very short time. The directors worked very quickly. So, there were some divisions that emerged between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cast members, and between Indigenous cast members who followed traditional cultural practices and those who did not, or divisions between drinkers and non-drinkers, smokers and non-smokers in terms of bonding opportunities. Plus there were gender differences, between male and female, between those who favor a process- oriented focus or a product-oriented focus, between perspectives on sacred and profane, and between different communication styles. So a lot of these differences were very present. Plus we had serious physical challenges as I described earlier. The cultural politics were a really important part of Sucker Falls, whose complexities didn’t get addressed in depth, neither within the script and its evolution nor within the rehearsal studio. There was a feeling among some cast members that Drew’s perspective on Indigenous casinos and land claims was unclear. The themes and content were really potent and important territory triggering potentially polarizing perspectives. There was not yet the depth of the integration of themes and content that could be, or needed to be.
JE: And then in terms of the public response to the production either from audiences or critics?
SW: We didn’t get the same kind of overwhelming big audiences that just flooded through for The Good Person of Setzuan. We were really hurt by that cancellation of the second week of shows due to abysmally inclement weather. The week of cancelled shows affected the cast – the building of characterizations and a spirit of ensemble, and it affected the momentum of building an audience. Audiences responded to different parts of the production. They were really interested in the Indigenous perspective and focus. But one Indigenous person felt that Sucker Falls was a piece that was dangerous for Anglo audiences to see, for white audiences to see. I think that response spoke to the need for a greater clarity of intentions around the representation of Indigenous casinos and land claims within the narrative. Some critics were very negative, some kind of in-between, and one I felt had a really balanced perspective that matched my own assessment. The Wendigo character and its realization certainly made a big impact. So did the presence of the Indigenous and other actors and performers. In general there was a feeling of it being a good show, rather than a great production. I feel that Sucker Falls was a profoundly unique production and a profoundly important step.
JE: Towards?
SW: For Vancouver Moving Theatre, it was the first step in a series of collaborations involving Indigenous artists. It was also an important step in evolvlng a body of theatrical repertoire that is coming from this land, that speaks to this land.
JE: So, maybe that can take us to the question about the place of this production in VMT’s evolution.
SW: The Good Person of Setzuan had one kind of an impact. A whole lot of the performers and artists that were part of it went on to become major creative forces, and award-winning actor-creator-directors. From the work of Kim Collier, and Jonathon Young and the Electric Company; to playwright/director James Fagan Tait; and Steven Hill, founder of the Leaky Heaven Circus and Fight With a Stick; Camyar Chai, founding artistic producer of Neworld Theatre. There were a whole series of original repertoire and productions that emerged out of those relationships. For VMT, these included We’re All In This Together, a shadow theatre play exploring roots of addiction and recovery with director Kim Collier; a whole series of projects we did with Jimmy Tait, from a big community play (2003, In the Heart of a City: The Downtown Eastside Community Play) to co-productions with Neworld Theatre and the PuSH Festival (The Idiot, Crime and Punishment), to collaborations with the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (Bread and Salt), SFU/Woodwards Cultural Programs (Bah Humbug!,) and as a staging consultant for The Big House and Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way: foundational collaborative/creative partnerships seeded in The Good Person of Setzuan production that had a formative impact on the evolution of our company and creative practice. There were collegial relationships formed with artists from Sucker Falls who participated in a number of projects and festivals over the years, including Jacques Lalonde, Wayne Lavallee, Monique Mojica. A number of the artists that were a part of Sucker Falls are doing ground breaking work in this country. For ourselves, VMT, the experience of Sucker Falls seeded twenty years of collaborations and engagement with Indigenous artists, organizations, and partners in a whole variety of contexts, from festival events to theatrical and interarts projects, opera, a national tour, house post and totem pole installations and ceremonies, a canoe launch and landings, and an Indigenous arts market. So, collaborating on Sucker Falls was a huge learning that opened up the door to other huge learnings that were needed and opportunities down the road that we could never have imagined back in 2001.
JE: I understand you’ve just been nominated for an award in conjunction with a project?
SW: That’s true, that’s true. The production Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way was produced by VMT in collaboration with Indigenous and Non-Indigenous partners across the country. It was written by Renae Morriseau (the director), Rosemary Georgeson and myself with contributions from the cast, knowledge-keepers and partnering communities. It was performed by an Indigenous ensemble of ten Elders, actors and poets who were joined onstage in each location by Indigenous cultural speakers, youth and weavers from that territory. Renae, Rosemary and myself were nominated for a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for “outstanding outreach, community engagement, demonstrating the importance of culture, tradition, community, family and identities.”
JE: Congratulations.
SW: Oh, thank you.
SW: Sucker Falls was our first collaboration with an Indigenous playwright and with a theatre production involving Indigenous actors. It was our first encounter with original creation involving culturally specific Indigenous content, world views, and spiritual protocol concerns; our first experience of learning how Indigenous collaborations can involve other than standard responsibilities of western theatre. So those are some of the reasons why Sucker Falls proved to be profoundly important in our company’s development. I have realized as you are prompting us to look back: there are aspects of Brecht and Weill’s values that attracted me to the Brechtian repertoire, and have remained part of our ongoing practice. The whole notion of theatre that educates and entertains has been foundational for us, theatre that has social, educational purposes, theatre that invites spectators as observers and witnesses, that brings them to a point of recognition, understanding, desire for action. Theatre that’s fun for the actors and the audience both, while arousing critical thought; theatre that’s structured as self-contained scenes; most of VMT’s original repertoire has been in that form. Most of VMT’s productions involve visible musicians. We usually stop during songs so that you can really take in the meaning. We use projected images or contextual material to show the background and context of our stories, that’s been really important. We usually embed the dramatic action within an overall musical structure. These practices have been carried forward. In both The Good Person of Setzuan and Sucker Falls, the music has served as an independent expression of attitudes to the scripted material. I’d say that music is another layering of content that’s foundational for the narrative. The layering of emotional and spiritual content through the language of music in addition to scripted words, providing commentary through the choice of songs, instrumentation and instrumental numbers.
JE: And how do you see Ron Samworth’s embodying of that principal in the work that he did on Sucker Falls?
SW: From my perspective, I’d say it was imperfectly realized, partially realized, we needed more time to really do this in a deep way; but on the other hand, we did take a lot of time working through the entire script, to identify how the musical structure would support, interweave and comment on the narrative action. Ron’s vision was most fully realized in creating the sonic worlds of the Wendigo, fire and impending apocalypse. Ron’s intentions and sonic elements were present and woven throughout the narrative, in a state of “becoming”. That’s how I would describe it.
JE: It’s a very interesting composite picture that I’m getting of the production. This interview has been really helpful because it is so detailed, and well prepared, thank you for that.
SW: You challenged me to think back, and to remember, in order to respond to the questions honestly and with understanding. As I looked back at this history, I realized these were pivotal events – particularly the experiences surrounding Drew’s play Sucker Falls. I haven’t thought of these productions for many years. What was our understanding at the time that we created them? How have they impacted, reverberated and fed our emergent artistic practice through the years? What elements from these experiences and learnings have we been carrying forward? I’m grateful to have had this opportunity.