David Gagnon Walker on his Audience Interaction
David Gagnon Walker
Writer, Producer, Performer
On January 29, David Gagnon Walker sat down with Dr. Stefano Muneroni (Associate Professor; MA Program Coordinator; PhD Program Coordinator at the University of Alberta) to talk about his play This Is the Story of the Child Ruled By Fear.
Below are two excerpts from the interview. The interview can be heard on Theatre Seen on CJSR (and will be linked when the link is available).
Stefano:
Tell us a little bit about your choice of playwriting or whether it was a choice?
David:
It was a horrible accident. In high school, I wanted to be a jazz musician and my best friend wanted to be an actor, and talk me into doing improv comedy with him. And that led to high school plays and all you know all those things and I guess by the age of 18, I really thought I'm going to be…I knew I loved the theater, and all I really knew of the theater was acting. So I thought, I'm going to be an actor. This is going to be great. I grew up in Edmonton, and then I came here to the U of A, and I did a BA year and I auditioned for the BFA in Acting Program, and I got into it. And I think within six months of being in the BFA Acting Program, I realized…the first time we did a professional audition? It we were all invited to audition for Shakespeare in the Park and Edmonton. And I think something about doing that audition process made me realize that actually, I didn't want to be a professional actor, because something about the audition process just made me feel like, in my soul, like it wasn't good. It felt deeply like, oh, no, this is what it is to be a professional actor.I had a really bad day that day. And I really had a bad day, the next day. And during that time, also, I think I really loved my BA year at the U of A. I really enjoyed taking English classes and taking philosophy classes, and I had started reading a lot of poetry and I started writing a lot of poetry sort of seriously. And so then I thought, well, if I don't want to be an actor, what I must want to be as a poet. So I'm going to have many heartfelt conversations with David Lee, my advisor in the BFA program, and we're going to talk about me dropping out of the program. And I think hugely to David's credit, he said, Well, it sounds like you want to drop out of the program. And that sounds like maybe you should do that. Which, you know, to this day, I'm really grateful for David, because it was true, it was just really honestly, like I had found something out about being an actor and about being an artist. And I think what I realized without maybe knowing that at the time was that I just wanted to make stuff. I just wanted to be making things. So then I transferred out of the U of A and I went to Montreal and I finished my undergrad as an English degree at Concordia University in Montreal, taking a lot of poetry classes and things like that. Really thinking I'm leaving the theater behind forever, and I'm going to be a writer and this is going to be great. And within a year I just missed…I think I missed all my friends too much, which is another way of saying that I missed the collaborative situation of making things with other people too much. And I thought, “Well, okay, I'm in writing school” and there was a playwriting class that was offered. So I took it and I wrote my first play. And then I think what was important and what I want to talk about a lot today is that I'm very glad that I wrote my first play and a bunch of my friends back in Alberta immediately said, well, we should do that play at the Edmonton Fringe. So I went from never having written to play before to doing a Fringe show in about four months. And that was a really important experience because I think what that taught me was that making plays isn't so much about writing plays, it's about making plays. And I had so much fun in the rehearsal hall doing that, that that's when it all kind of came together for me when I realized, “Okay, well, I don't have to leave the theater behind for good. I don't have to not think about stages anymore. But what I do have to do is, is write for my friends, and find ways of doing things on stages and in rehearsal halls with people who I find interesting, and people who I love.” And I guess by that point, I was like, 22 years old, and I was calling myself a playwright. And I was going around applying for playwriting things. And then I applied for the playwriting program at the National Theatre School. And that was really, you know, wonderful. And, and yeah, so I guess I'm leaving a lot out there. And I'm leaving a lot of sort of later things about performance theory and dance world/performance art world stuff, but I think maybe because I'm in this building, I'm thinking about like, “oh, yeah, it was an acting school in this building.” And that that really is the origin story. Yeah, I'll stop there.
Stefano:
I find it very interesting that you started as a performer and you continue to be a performer, right? Your career as a playwright hasn't really stopped that part of you. So I would like for you to talk a little bit about that. What does it mean to perform in your own work?
David:
Yeah, I think - And I'm realizing this more and more, because I've started now, Child Ruled By Fear is kind of the first of what is now a series of projects that I that I keep putting myself in. But I feel like it's work that I need to be performing because of the nature of the thing. I think when I think about performance, now, what I'm really interested in is, it’s similar to what I'm interested in now when I'm writing which, which is just kind of openness. And I don't always like the word “vulnerability,” but I do think I'm interested in vulnerability, like I think I'm and if you see this show, you'll see it's like the performance state of this work. And a couple of the new things that I'm making now doesn't feel to me like I'm acting, it feels very close to this state that I'm in right now sitting in front of you. Like I think it's about - I want to open a channel that might surprise me, in front of other people. And I want their reactions to feed it. And I want us all to go somewhere that might surprise us. And I think, like in that way, it feels really similar to writing. Because I think when I'm writing it's it's exactly the same thing. I'm not a big planner, I'm not a big outliner I think my writing process is is really kind of impulsive and it's about discoveries. And I think - now making stuff that's a little bit more kind of porous and open in terms of being more autobiographical, that kind of feels like an extension of that. Like, I don't know, late lately, my favourite performers are all singer songwriters, who are just very, very, they're just singing the song. And it's simple, and it's clear, and it's really sincere. Which is like, it's funny to have had ended up there having started in acting, but I don't think those things are actually all that different, either, which we can talk about more if you want to. Does that make sense? Am I making sense?
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Stefano:
So let's now transition to the play that is actually in production here in Edmonton. And we want to remind both audiences that it opens this week, and it's an absolute gem. The reason why I invited David here today is that I got the chance to see parts of the show through video, and I was absolutely mesmerized by your astounding ability to weave together different forms. There is intermediality, there are objects, there is audience participation. Tell us a little bit about this story, which I thought it was so moving, and so important for audiences to see. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the story and the play itself, and the production that is going up this week.
David:
Yes, absolutely. Thanks for saying those nice things. It's very kind of you. Thank you. So it's called This Is the Story of the Child Ruled By Fear and basically what the show is, is a story that the audience and I read out loud together. So there are seven audience members volunteer to literally have a script in their hands and cold read the play with me. And then the rest of the audience, sort of at a couple key moments function as a chorus. So there's, there's sort of speaking in one voice, choral text, that's also an important part of the experience. And it's basically a fairy tale about anxiety and depression, but sort of like a Grimms Brothers dark kind of fairy tale. So there's a form and a content thing that I think kind of work nicely together. And I guess the genesis of the thing is that I had this formal idea, which is I really wanted to make, I love readings, I love the first day of rehearsal process, I love cold readings of new plays, they're like my favourite part of making theatre. And I think something happens in that moment, that's really special, and that audiences don't always get to see or feel. So I thought, “well, I want to give that to people, I want people to get to feel how I feel as an actor, or as a playwright, or as a dramaturg, or whatever, when a thing is read.” And then sort of separately from that I had been writing this material about The Child Ruled By Fear that was sort of..and I had no idea what I would do with it. I didn't know if it was poems, or if it was a play, or if it was my own diary, or what the hell it was. But I, but I had this sort of body of writing that was full of monsters and myths and natural disasters, and it was about The Child Ruled By Fear. And I think when the light bulb really went off for me was when I realized that this formal thing I wanted to do, and this body of strange writing, made a lot of sense together, because the experience of asking the audience to read a story out loud with me makes people nervous. And it's a show about living with nervousness. So I don't know, I swear to God, it took a year for that to click for me - that I have that I was working on one project and not two. But when it came together, from that point on pretty quickly, it was like, “oh, okay, okay, okay. Okay. Okay.” And I think I knocked out a draft in like a week, just kind of assembling things that I already had written and adding to them. And, yeah, pretty quickly. And like, I'll say this over and over again, if we start talking about like, playwriting practice kind of stuff, you got to hear the thing, you have to get your friends into your apartment and hear it as early as you can. Because it was - I invited 10 people over into a little office and we read it for the first time and they all had exactly the experience that I hoped audience members would have. And that's when I went “okay, cool. This is gonna work.” Yeah, so then, I guess you're asking too about sort of the, the video stuff and the staging of the whole thing. Which kind of, you know, it's always two things. It's always like, what are the people I'm working with already know how to do and then what emerges naturally from the demands of the writing? And Christian Berry and Judy Wensel and Tori are all like really, in various ways had all already made really great work involving live video cameras and involving objects. Judy and I just a year before had made like an object theater short piece that was all about kind of inspired by you know, that Forced Entertainment tabletop Shakespeare thing. Yeah, we like really nerded out about that for a while and thought, “hey, that's, that looks fun, we should do that.” So this idea of object work and live video work, more than anything kind of came out of like, the expertise and the desires of the people on the team. But originally, we thought, well, we're all telling a story together. And it feels like the register of like fairy tales, and storytime and, you know, bedtime story kind of a situation. So the original idea was that all of the audience members would also have an object to manipulate as a character. This first second, we tried that, we realized it was way too much for people to handle, and it wasn't any fun for anybody. So then the object work became just sort of my domain, which is how we ended up with this thing, where there's a lot of like tabletop storytelling that happens in this piece with like, different - I don't want to give too much away if you're gonna see it. But there's like, there's a couple moments that I'm really fond of where like, via the magic of crappy little 1080P webcams, and some stuff we built, things sort of appear in a really gratifying way. But again, it was all kind of organic, because it's sort of like when you have a script, it also sort of like suggests parameters, and sort of an aesthetic, that then it's just about following your nose. And I like the available light idea that Eric Rose, at Ghost River talks about a lot where like, what you have is the people in the room and what they know how to do. So once you put a team together, and you have the thing that you need to make happen, that's what you have is who is there? And what do they know how to do? And how much fabric do you have lying around often in the theater?
Stefano:
It seems to me as I listen to talk about the role of the audience in Child Ruled By Fear that the audience becomes an integral part of the show, not just in display, but also in your aesthetic view for the new theater. Is that how you look at the audience? As an audience that needs to be involved, that needs to be a part almost like a character in your projects? I find this point very interesting, because we're talking once again, since the beginning of time, about the death of theater or theater as losing its grip on society, not being able to represent, you know, our concern, and so on and so forth. But it seems to me that specifically in your work, and specifically in Child Ruled By Fear the audience feels quite empowered, because they do have a role. The way in which they might read the script might, you know, signify something that you didn't even predict as a writer or performer. So there's something about that role that empowers the audience. And I would guess, also the audience that watches the show, not just the audience that participates. Do you have anything to say about the very large topic of new Canadian theatre and how we can think about the audience in different ways? It's your theoretical, but also very practical question?
David:
Yeah, boy, do I. And, you know, it's funny because I, I think largely because of this show, and maybe because of a couple of one or two things I did before it, this participatory thing is becoming my brand in a way that has sort of been accidental, but that I welcome. And so I sometimes I feel this pressure to like really advocate for it as like a unique and special and wonderful thing, which you know, in a way it is, but I also just think that any live art event is, by nature, participatory.
Stefano:
Thank you for your comment. I do appreciate it because I think that we see a lot of theater that doesn't answer the question “why this play now?”, which to me is, is a very important question that every artist should do, should we ask of themselves and the audience they asked to come to see their show? As my last question, because I would like to leave some time for questions from the audience. Could you just tell us what you're working on right now and your next project your next…what is it that they call it, your next six months plan?
David:
If I had a six month plan I would be so happy Stefano, you have no idea. What am I working on other than the novel and maybe writing, which is top secret, even to me. So I'm making this new piece right now that I'm actually as soon as we wrap up, this run of shows here, I'm going off to Montreal to work with Playwrights Workshop Montreal on a development process of a new thing, which without saying too, too, too much about it because I do sometimes like to keep my cards a little close to my chest. It's called I Would Prefer Not To. It's partially an adaptation of the Herman Melville story, Bartleby the Scrivener, which is a 19th century short story, which I think people come across it a lot in like English classes in university, so people may know it, people may not but it's, it's like a very funny, very strange, it's like a Kafka story pre-Kafka kind of. But but but it's a story about a man who works in a lawyer's office, his name is Bartleby and he keeps coming to work. But one day, he just starts responding with the phrase “I would prefer not to,” to anything that anyone ever asked him to do. And he ends up preferring not to eat ultimately, and then starving to death in jail. And it's a very funny story. So you know, I'm sure it sounds very funny when I put it that way. But, so I kind of read that story as one of the first really great modern literary works about depression. I think Bartleby is like refusal/inability to function is like a mental health story, ultimately. And so I'm making this piece called I Would Prefer Not To, which is about 50%, an adaptation of the Bartleby the Scrivener story, and 50%, an autobiographical sort of digging into a history of mental illness in my family that goes back, at least five generations that I'm aware of. And the thing about it formally is that an audience member plays Bartleby every night. Because it's a part with one line, although they just have to say “I would prefer not to” whenever anybody speaks to them. So it's like I'm inviting an audience member up on stage to help me figure out my own family's shit is sort of the premise. Which I think is like, to come back a little bit (this is just coming to me now) but to come back a little bit to some of these questions, but why do these participatory things and, and way back to the beginning of our conversation about like, what am I interested in as a performer? And what is my performance state that I kind of am drawn to, I think what I really like about these participatory shows that I've been making, especially Child Ruled By Fear, and especially this new one, is that I'm like very earnestly asking the audience for help to, to complete this thing that I need to complete. It's like, the dramaturg, I'm working with the new one put this really well, recently, she was like, “Oh, I think what you're doing here is you're walking out on stage and you're saying to people, I need you to help me figure this out.” And I like that. That's a gesture that I really like. Because I think it's honest, like I think - I don't think we make theater just for the audience. I don't think anybody's making art just to please the people who might come to it. I think, anybody and anybody who makes anything knows this, you're doing it so you can get something out of the process of doing it. There's something you need. So I think that's part of the gesture, too. And that's why it has to be me. That's why I can't hire an actor to play a character named Jim who's based on David like it, it has to be me up there because it is about me asking for help. And I think that is okay. I hope. I don't know. It's a weird way to make projects where it's like, “Oh, what, what am I **** up about? And what am I supposed to do?” And, you know, you just have faith that, that might resonate.