What’s the origin story behind your theatre company – or the story about how you started your career in theatre? In a nutshell? And what affect does that origin story have on your ability to sell your work?
What’s the origin story behind your theatre company – or the story about how you started your career in theatre? In a nutshell? And what affect does that origin story have on your ability to sell your work?
I would love to answer this, but I’m still writing mine. What’s yours, Ian?
My origin story: I liked performing in school but couldn’t remember my lines. So I figured I should be a writer. And then I found out there’s no money in creative writing and maybe I wasn’t that good at it anyway. So I decided to get into marketing because that’s where the jobs were. Then I realized that advertising has a dark side and on a bad day we tell a lot of lies. So I went back to theatre to try to buy back the bits of my soul I sell off during the day.
AND that’s just the opening credit sequence!
OK that’s my origin story. Let’s have yours BFG. Feel free to embellish.
I hope you succeed in buying back your soul. I think this blog is probably a good investment in it…
Well, as I said, mine is still being written.
But it started in the 3rd grade when I, still very angry over my family’s move south of the border, was cast in a school play. This was because I was loud, not because I was talented (I like to think that now I’m both). I loved it, and it became an outlet for me.
I wrote, directed, and acted from then on (though now I strictly act…for the time being, at least). I was always so much more serious about it all than anyone around me was. So much so that when I told my parents that I wanted to be an actor and study theatre at NYU their response was more or less, “Great, now could you do the dishes?”
By some miracle, I got into NYU and thrived and survived for four years there (with my various stints abroad)and, despite my wealth of training and my vast knowledge of how the industry works, I am still sorting out how to start. It gets easier day by day. And the more wonderful TO theatre people I meet, the more confident I am that it will all happen in due course. And I am in Toronto again, which makes me smile, because it was, ultimately, what I wanted.
I find that this story and my experiences draw me toward works about longing, about displaced people, about community, about roots, about home. It’s a professional journey, but it’s also a personal one. You’re buying back the pieces of your soul, I would say I’m still discovering the pieces of mine.
“I find that this story and my experiences draw me toward works about longing, about displaced people, about community, about roots, about home. It’s a professional journey, but it’s also a personal one.”
Nicely put.
Thank you…I have a way with words at 2:29 AM.
I’ll give you the OBU story. It came out of my frustration that Jason Sherman isn’t known internationally. I already had the name but the idea coalesced in late 2000 when I went to Sydney, Australia to get into the directing program at NIDA alum includes Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, and Cate Blanchett). My first interview consisted of spending 30 seconds talking about the project I had to prepare and the rest of the time answering the question “you do a lot of play development in Toronto, don’t you?”
My prep for the interview involved looking at Australian theatre history as well as reviewing Canadian theatre history and discovering there were a lot of similarities. That’s how it all began.