This was the opening scene of a landmark, limited-run revival of the musical Spring Awakening, where d/Deaf* actors were given the spotlight and their hearing counterparts acted as their vocal shadows. This integration of hearing and d/Deaf performers is what Artistic Sign Language (ASL) interpreter Landon Krentz and his team hope to achieve with Theatre Interpreting Services (TIS), a Vancouver-based company that helps theatre organizations gain exposure to d/Deaf culture and make theatre more accessible for the city’s d/Deaf population.

However, TIS is not your average interpretation service—it’s the only d/Deaf-owned business of its kind in Canada. “It’s important to have a d/ Deaf person to represent the d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community because of our understanding of our cultural values and ASL aesthetics,” said Krentz—one of six interpreters in TIS—in an email interview with This.

TIS interpreters—some of whom are also hearing—are specialized for theatre, which means their work involves much more artistry than simple translation. Rather than having a hearing interpreter stand off to the side of the stage and interpret on the fly, TIS interpreters must develop and rehearse an ASL version of the script. On top of that, Krentz says they like to encourage inclusive practices that allow for more artistic interpretations for d/Deaf audiences such as shadow interpreting, a method in which they follow actors around while performing ASL simultaneously.

But there’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to making theatre more accessible: most production companies usually don’t allocate budget for these deep-integration methods and often scramble to find interpreters for productions a month prior to performances, says Krentz.

“[Typically,] interpreters are expected to show up and disappear,” Krentz says. “This is not an authentic approach to adding artistic sign language stories on stage and often, d/Deaf people will notice a disconnect in synergy.”

To remedy this, the government offers funds through accessibility grants that can be used to bring interpreters in earlier in the production process, but Krentz said many theatre companies don’t know those funds are available.

“We have a social responsibility to people from our community to do this work and try to create these kind of important conversations within the Canadian theatre community,” said Krentz. “It is slowly on the rise.”

* This Magazine has stylized d/Deaf to be inclusive of all deafness on a spectrum

Photo by Michael Cooper. Photo courtesy of VideoCabaret.

Walking into a small room, I am greeted by an usher as songs about Louis Riel and Canadian identity foreshadow the upcoming play. I take my seat across from the centre of what I assume is the stage. Scarlet curtains frame a black window made to look almost as if you are peering into a TV screen. Above the stage, Comedy and Tragedy Masks take the shape of maple leaves, accentuating the name of the theatre company responsible for the next two hours of hilarity and history: VideoCabaret.

The play I am about to see is the first of a summer-long, two-part series called Confederation & Riel and Scandal & Rebellion, which is about the struggle of forming the Dominion of Canada. These plays do much more than entertain, though–they teach. They are a clear feat to anyone who fought to stay awake during their grade school history classes: Canadian history has become interesting. They manage this through a type of speed, wit, and hand-eye coordination that left me flabbergasted at how much I didn’t know before walking into this room.

The theatre company, founded in 1976, utilizes video cameras, hot-wired televisions, and the power of rock ’n’ roll to engage its audience in plays concerning mass media politics. Since then, VideoCabaret has toured the world, won a total of 23 awards, and produced over 15 plays. The Confederation series, being shown at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre, is part of a 21-part play cycle written by VideoCabaret co-founder Michael Hollingsworth that dramatizes and satirizes four centuries of Canadian history in all of its problematic glory.

The plays aren’t what you would think of when hearing the word “theatre.” They are presented in black-box style, where the entire theatre is darkened save for a sliver of light that reveals the actors and subtle projections on hidden screens that form a setting. Hollingsworth’s goal is to create scenes that are under one minute. With speedy character introductions and successional quips that leave no time for afterthought, it’s inconceivable that only eight actors cross the stage, each having more than five roles.

As the play progresses, there is no time to mentally review what you know from elementary school. The play presents a story of Confederation through archetypes that made the characters and plot identifiable, leaving no room for second-guessing the difference between the Fenians and the Orangemen.

In today’s fast-paced age of content creation, the average Canadian’s attention span is eight seconds. VideoCabaret’s theatrical splicing of the lesser-known facts of history has created an indispensable teaching tool that stands its ground in a time where celebrity featured commercials and clickbait titles vie for our attention. VideoCabaret’s Confederation doesn’t ask for your attention, it grabs it, and doesn’t let go until you’ve learned a thing or two about the True North.

GEMMA JAMES-SMITH AND GIL GARRATT OF CLAWHAMMER | Photo courtesy Clawhammer

The wonderfully non-human retelling of a Canadian novella on stage

IT’S A STORY that needs to be retold.

“The Faustian bargain is a classic hook,” says Gil Garratt, referring to Derek McCormack’s 2008 novella The Show that Smells. Garratt is adapting the book for the stage via Clawhammer, the small company he founded in 2011 and that he runs with his wife, Gemma James-Smith.

The story rests on Jimmie (as in Rodgers, the real-life country singer and yodeller). As he lies dying of tuberculosis, which actually killed him in real life in 1933 at age 35, Jimmie is visited by another historical figure: the 20th-century Italian designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, who is not as she seems here. (She died at 83 in 1973.) Vampirish and devilish, Schiaparelli offers to restore the singer’s health in exchange for his wife Carrie’s participation in her latest project, a perfume. Coco Chanel, a contemporary and rival of Schiaparelli’s, and the Carter Family Singers intervene as well.

“Visually, it called to be staged, built, seen,” says Garratt, who is also artistic director for the Blyth Festival. The Clawhammer production, The Show that Smells (or The Last Temptation of Jimmie Rodgers)—running May 13–31 at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace—is an intensive project. Along with writing, performing and producing, Garratt and James-Smith operate the sound and lights. They also provide the voices, music and movements of the puppets who play Rodgers, Schiaparelli et al.

James-Smith, who works as a studio assistant with Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, researched images, stories and recordings of the characters’ real lives for her design drawings. She and Garratt also studied Schiaparelli’s designs, the sculpture of Swiss surrealist Meret Oppenheim and the work of Canadian artist David Altmejd, whose image is on the cover of McCormack’s book.

Once the drawings were complete, James-Smith and Garratt started writing. “Once we had a storyline laid out, we began to actually build the puppets,” she says. The puppets are made of wood, wire, Paperclay (a kind of paper maché, James-Smith explains), glass eyes, human hair, assorted fabrics and, of course, string. Construction took nine months, with much experimentation and “engineering” involved to ensure the marionettes moved properly, from joint rotation to maintaining posture (no lolling heads).

Photo courtesy Clawhammer

“We wanted to find ways to make objects that were themselves beautifully conceived, meticulously and deliberately constructed, but also hideous and nightmarish,” explains Garratt. “The puppets [are] simultaneously portraits, caricatures and monsters.”

Last year, the pair publicly workshopped the play. Leading up to that performance, they met with McCormack several times. Garratt recalls playing Rodgers’ tune “T.B. Blues” for the author in their living room. They all fell silent afterward. “It was a moment when the emotional core of the show became clearer,” says Garratt. It’s a play with heart: lightheartedness, silliness, and a dark heart, too.

“Derek has done this brilliant thing with the tone of the piece: it’s outrageous, and very silly, and yet incredibly disturbing, too,” says Garratt. “And the ending is actually quite moving,” Figuring out how to translate that tone to live theatre has been a big part of the challenge. Improvisation helped, according to James-Smith: “When we presented the workshop, we improvised quite a bit also. A lot of new characteristics came out of that, informed by the audience and our heightened energy.”

The play is a roughly 70-minute performance with no intermission. Though they’re still developing aspects of the production, some things are fixed: Garratt’s fondness for operating—playing—Schiaparelli, for example. “I won’t share,” he says. The couple takes turns playing Rodgers. Considering Clawhammer is a two-person operation, this particular string of performances will test their endurance. “The show is definitely a workout for both of us,” says James-Smith. “It can be a bit of a bloodsport. We push each other a lot,” says Garratt.

But it works because they keep pushing each other, say these partners. They wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Which is why I find things like Ugly Button Productions so exciting.

Ugly Button Productions (UBP) is a theatre company run by young adults, and aims to express some of the serious or taboo subjects of modern life in new and unique ways. In its proposed debut production On The Edge, the company takes a serious look at some of the devastating effects of depression. It doesn’t just want the audience to see these effects, but fully experience them—confronting the audience with some ideals they may not be comfortable with. As Michelle Bozzetto, the president of UBP, told me about the play:

On The Edge is going to give audiences a very different look into the life of someone living with depression, someone who is able to rationalize the idea of suicide. It’s a concept that many people cannot fully understand unless they themselves are living with the illness…we hope to raise awareness and help eliminate the stigma of mental illness in general through this experience of theatre.

However UBP’s aim isn’t just to help raise awareness about serious issues like depression. Bozzetto and her team want to help encourage young adults to take a more keen interest in the performing arts, and to show how creative outlets like theatre can be relevant for everyone. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you want to do, UBP is out to prove that there is a place for you. As its mission statement on the website says: ‘Think of us like a jar of mismatched buttons. We may not fit in where we belong, but put us in that jar and we’re a completely unique and extremely colourful group of individuals who inspire each other to shine!’

This is why I find theatre companies like UBP so interesting. Theatre was always a huge inspiration for me, and Bozzetto, as she told Good News Toronto, was moved to join the performing arts after watching musicals at a young age. She is now using that same source of inspiration not only to encourage others to join theatre, but to also address major issues that plague modern society. This is what I feel theatre is all about.

The expected cost to produce On The Edge is around the $4,000 mark, and after two fairly successful fundraisers they have already raised more than $500 (with 10 percent  of all proceeds going to the mental health charity To Write Love on Her Arms “as a more direct mode of helping the people who do have to live with depression”). More details about upcoming fundraisers and ways to donate to UBP can be found on its website, as well as its Facebook and Twitter pages.

Monique Mojica as Caesar in "Death of a Chief," 2006. Photo courtesy Native Earth Performing Arts.

I joined the board of Native Earth Performing Arts, in Toronto’s Distillery District, several years ago, and quickly discovered the best perk of the office is watching a performance evolve through rehearsal. Seeing the actors figuring out their moves together, adjusting dialogue, and dissecting the meaning of the play, and then witnessing opening night when they fire the creation into life…is magic. No better word for it.

A case in point was the evolution of Death of a Chief, NEPA’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Rome becomes “Rome, Ontario,” swords are exchanged for rocks, gender is reversed (Kuna-Rappahannock playwright Monique Mojica playing Caesar, and Cree actor Lorne Cardinal her husband Calpurnius), and soothsayers speak Ojibway. Death was seemingly a departure for Native Earth, whose whole purpose is to develop contemporary work by Aboriginal artists. But clearly this was not a bid to update Shakespeare, much less to do the play in “Indian dress.” And it was a great deal more than an adaptation. Besides the title and sex change, words were altered and scenes moved, all of it the result of a lengthy and deeply collaborative process spanning five years and including more than 30 artists guided by NEPA’s outgoing artistic director, Algonquin playwright Yvette Nolan. Rehearsals included study sessions where tables, chairs, and books were hauled out, and everyone delved into the script. The point of departure—the place where Western and indigenous could meet—was found in Brutus’s line “Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins / Remorse from power.” Like Emperor, like Chief, you could say. Chief gets elected, gets arrogant, gets ousted. It’s hard to think of a traditional story with more currency today, given events in North Africa. But it’s also an astonishing vehicle for taking on Band politics.

The play’s brilliance is in using the Western canon to talk about the corruption of power on reserves, thereby insinuating a non-Native side to the story. The great gift of Native theatre is this uncommon view of our shared history, very hard to come by otherwise. Its eternal challenge is communicating the Aboriginal world view to non-Aboriginal audiences. And I use the term “theatre” loosely, for the concept of drama is multidisciplinary and comes with dance and song, at times lacking dialogue. The job requires reconciling Western conventions with indigenous tradition, which, for example, communicates through gesture, rhythm, and silence, and eschews central characters. Always it forces the question: How far to go to fit into an alien art form?

The artists I came to know through Native Earth are multi-talented and constantly multi-tasking: bridging cultures, crossing genres, translating custom, melding perspectives. The work is, by definition, a continuous negotiation between cultures—among cultures, actually, for these creators are themselves a diverse lot, part of an urban community of Aboriginal artists who come from all over the Americas. I was also struck by how many are young.

“It’s amazing how slowly and how quickly things change,” Nolan says. “It feels like we have been struggling forever to have our stories heard, and nothing ever changes. Then I look around me, and I see the battalion of new, committed young artists.” Nolan’s successor is Ntlaka’pamux (or Thompson River Salish) playwright Tara Beagan, who is in her 30s, has written over 15 plays and has numerous collaborations under her belt.

Native Earth is Turtle Island’s eldest indigenous theatre company, has been around for 28 seasons, built up a repertoire, established an annual workshop for new work called Weesageechak, and pioneered a highly successful made-to-order program providing short plays and skits on designated topics. When West Hill Collegiate Institute in Toronto was debating the fate of its sports team name (the Warriors) and its feathered stereotype of a logo, it commissioned a piece from the theatre. Four actors were sent in for a day of performances and Q&As that both focused and heated up debate. The result was positive: the logo went. It is this kind of interchange I think of when considering the disaster that is Caledonia, and the chasm of ignorance that still exists between Native and non-Native Canada. So few places exist where any of us can hear Aboriginal voices live and unmediated; it seems strange to me Dalton McGuinty hasn’t called in Native Earth.

Next year the company will move into its own performance space at the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre. When that happens, Toronto will become the only major city in the country with a dedicated, Native-run centre for Aboriginal culture.

Nina Arsenault. Illustration by Chris Kim.

Nina Arsenault has spent a fortune changing her appearance from male to female. The 37-year-old used to work in the sex trade, but now supports herself as a playwright, performer, and motivational speaker to queer youth. Her one-woman show, The Silicone Diaries, recently had a second highly successful run in Toronto, was later performed in Montreal (where This caught up with her) and will open in Vancouver next year.

THIS: Where did you grow up?

ARSENAULT: In Beamsville, Ontario, in the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park. It was a really tight-knit community. My memories of it are just great. But we moved when I was about six to a house in Smithville. It was very difficult to make friends because I was so feminine. Growing up in the trailer park and going to school with those kids, they always knew how girlish I was. With everyone on top of each other, you have no choice but to accept people. But being the new kid, it was very, very difficult to make friends. I have been a bit of a lone wolf all my life.

THIS: In The Silicone Diaries you talk about seeing a female mannequin in a store at age five. What was it that affected you that day?

ARSENAULT: I think just the harmony and symmetry of the face spoke to me. I knew that I was a girl inside but I had this boy body. Then, for my visual gaze to rest upon a face that was a sculpture of a woman’s face, I just seized on that as a child. It affected me. The perfection of it.

THIS: When did you decide to begin plastic surgery?

ARSENAULT: About age 23, but I didn’t have my first procedure until I was 25.

THIS: What did you have done?

ARSENAULT: At first just transsexual procedures to feminize myself. It got to a point where I looked as much like a normal woman as I possibly could. However, I still had masculine features. It was really traumatic on a daily basis to see those features. So I made the decision to really push the cosmetic procedures, knowing I would no longer look natural. That I would start to look plastic and artificial.

THIS: Like a mannequin?

ARSENAULT: Yeah. But I can’t say at the beginning of the journey I was trying to look like a mannequin or a Playboy bunny. I was just trying to be a woman.

THIS: Did you literally have 60 surgeries?

ARSENAULT: There were actually more. Some were just procedures, like a lip injection.

THIS: When was the last one?

ARSENAULT: In 2006.

THIS: How much did they cost?

ARSENAULT: Upwards of $200,000.

THIS: How did you afford that?

ARSENAULT: I was working in the sex trade and made an incredible amount of money so quickly there.

THIS: Men like “shemales”?

ARSENAULT: Yeah. In terms of supply and demand, there just aren’t a lot of us, but there’s a lot of interest. The first day I put my escort ad in the paper, I had 250 calls. I don’t think that’s something that’s spoken about that openly amongst otherwise heterosexual men. I could have worked from morning until night if I had wanted to.

THIS: What was it like working in the trade?

ARSENAULT: It was physically very tough. And I only did oral, no fucking.

THIS: A lot of transgender women work in the sex business. Why is that?

ARSENAULT: It’s one of the few places you can get work and feel safe. If you’re visibly transgender you’re going to be one of the most disenfranchised and disadvantaged people in culture.

THIS: You have two graduate degrees, right?

ARSENAULT: I do. But it’s tough to get straight work. You can’t imagine the amount of transphobia out there.

THIS: How long have you been out of the trade?

ARSENAULT: About three years. I support myself now as a performer.

THIS: In the play you mention that you have had your testicles removed. But you kept your penis. Why was that, if your goal was to be as close to a woman as possible?

ARSENAULT: I never knew what would happen to me financially so [if I still had my penis] I could always return to the sex business.

THIS: What has the play done for you?

ARSENAULT: It has been an incredibly healing ritual. I think I wrote it because I had a lot of emotional angst and suffering that I needed to express, that I needed someone to bear witness to. It makes me stronger every time I perform it.

THIS: Do you feel 100 percent female now or still a bit male?

ARSENAULT: I’ve always known I was a woman but I was socialized as a male. I have some qualities people see as male—I’m an aggressive thinker—but my core is definitely female.

THIS: Do you feel beautiful enough now?

ARSENAULT: I don’t work on the outside anymore. I concentrate now on inner work.

THIS: Any more surgeries ahead?

ARSENAULT: No. Not until I start to really visibly age.

Trailer for The Silicone Diaries:

Calgary from the air. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Oli-Oviyan.

Calgary is not a place to stay. A cultural wasteland with a boom-bust oil economy where hard workers can make their money before moving to a “real” city with “real” arts and culture—but not a place to stay. This is an all-too-common belief about Calgary. But skeptics should take a closer look at the Heart of the New West, because things are changing fast.

Many Calgarians, including newly elected mayor Naheed Nenshi, are committed to making this a livable city and creating a place where people will want to stay, set down roots, and build a life. What outsiders often miss, however, is that the foundation for that livable city has existed for many years, thanks to a vibrant grassroots arts community that hasn’t had much exposure outside the province, but has been churning out great work all the same. With the election of an exciting new mayor, local artists sense that the time has come to demolish Calgary’s “cultural wasteland” image.

“People have this story about Calgary that there’s nothing going on,” says Dr. Terry Rock, president and CEO of the Calgary Arts Development Authority. While the city has historically lagged on factors such as per capita funding and arts space, Rock says the slow and steady approach to building an arts community means that the city does things better—not faster. “There’s a convenience of being last to really get this going,” he says.

Calgary created CADA in March 2005 and says it’s the only organization of its kind in Canada, bundling together space, promotion, and funding for non-profit arts groups in one unified organization. CADA provides funding for both new and well-established arts organizations. In 2010, it funded 161 arts organizations with more than $3.8 million.

CADA has also been involved in the creation of six new arts spaces, including the highly anticipated National Music Centre, a project that received $75 million in government funding and will help revitalize Calgary’s East Village; and Seafood Market Studios, a temporary, and affordable rehearsal and studio space that artists can rent from the city. “At first glance, Calgary seems like a conservative place, where the focus is on the Stampede and the more traditional arts like the ballet and opera,” says Kerry Clarke, artistic director of the Calgary Folk Music Festival. “But scratch the surface and you find a very creative scene, where a breadth of mainstream and cutting-edge, underthe-radar events draw audiences that would make other cities envious.”

Now in its 32nd year, the Calgary Folk Music Festival has grown into one of Canada’s major music festivals. It started as a two-day event on three stages and is now a four-day event on seven stages, with other concerts and programming happening throughout the year.

In a place where public funding for the arts has traditionally been scarce or unpredictable, hardier species of arts organizations have grown and built wider, more sustainable audiences. Though public funding is still lower in Calgary on a per capita basis than many other cities in the country, attendance is comparatively high: in a population of one million, public attendance across arts organizations in 2009 was 2.5 million, meaning lots of people were making it out to events.

“The theatre is full of real people who want to see a play,” says Vanessa Porteous, artistic director of Alberta Theatre Projects, “not to be seen or to get a job.” It’s this approach, says Porteous, which drives the theatre itself. Calgarians have been particularly supportive of Alberta Theatre Projects’ Enbridge playRites Festival, a five-week celebration of Canadian playwriting. Going into its 25th season, playRites will premiere its 100th production in 2011.

With a new regime installed at city hall, arts advocates throughout Calgary repeat the same refrain: more money, more space, more arts-friendly. The most difficult period in an artist’s career is the first 10 years, and CADA’s Terry Rock would like to see money available for individual artists, not just organizations.

Zak Pashak, a Calgary entrepreneur who opened Broken City, a live-music venue, and founded Sled Island, a music festival that features local and international artists, firmly believes that the city has to be affordable and walkable to keep young artists around. If Calgary wants to foster arts and culture, he says, the city needs to be affordable for artists—which not only means a roof overhead and enough to eat, but also a supply of reasonably priced studio space and quality public transportation.

That’s not to say the cowboy ethos is totally gone from Calgary; the arts community remains independent-minded, and while public arts funding has increased, it’s still low compared to similarly sized cities in Canada. The arts in Calgary remain a labour of love by a group of people who can’t imagine doing anything else.

Vanessa Porteous, who came to Calgary 12 years ago, says, “I stayed because I had the best job in Canadian theatre and the next thing I knew, I had a community.”

Berend McKenzie

Nggrfg. For most people, the title of Vancouver actor and playwright Berend McKenzie’s play is nearly unsayable. But for McKenzie, naming his one-man play after the two slurs that plagued his childhood is the best way to understand and neutralize hatred. Audiences seem to agree: his play was a hit at the Edmonton and Vancouver fringe festivals and has since toured Vancouver high schools and even, with tweaks, elementary schools, where McKenzie talks with students about racism, homophobia, and bullying.

Extended Q&A

This: Where did the play debut?

McKenzie: It premiered at the Edmonton fringe, and then came to Vancouver and did a run at the Firehall arts centre. We garnered a Jessie Award nomination, which is our theatre award here for original script, and then we’ve done a run in Halifax for the Queer Acts theatre festival. Then the Vancouver School Board has picked it up, and I’ve done 14 secondary schools in Vancouver. We’ve adapted part of the story to work with elementary students, kindegarten to Grade 4, and another adaptation for Grades 5 to 7.

This: Really? How has it been adapted?

McKenzie: The last story in the play is called “Tassels,” and it’s based on the first time that I saw the miniseries Roots, and the subsequent bullying I received growing up in High Level and Valley View, Alberta. So we call for the Elementary schools it’s not called nggrfg, it’s called Tassels. It’s about me and my character, “Skip,” and he has a skipping rope that’s pink and he loves it and knows how to skip really well, and it has sparkly metallic tassels on each handle. A girl on the playground dares him to skip with the girls, and so he does, and then the schoolyard bully uses it as a whip and chases him around the schoolyard. So for Kindegarten to Grade 4 adaptation, we’ve taken out the words “nigger” and “fag,” because they don’t really understand it—we’ve put in “sissy” and boy and girl and cowgirl. For the Grade 5 to 7 show, we do the full thing. The story is still called Tassels but we haven’t changed any of the wording. I’m called “nigger” and some of the slave names from the show. We have some fairly lively talkbacks afterward.

This: So there’s a talking session after?

McKenzie: Definitely, a debrief after.

This: What kind of responses do you get from the kids in elementary school?

McKenzie: Everything from shock to a sense of almost relief that they can actually talk about it.

This: These are things that are present on the playground already?

McKenzie: Yeah. They’re words that they hear all the time, but they’re told “Don’t say them.” Well, to a child, I know from myself as a child, if you told me not to do or say something, and didn’t give me any sort of reasoning behind that, I would do it all the time, just because you told me not to.

These students, they hear it in music and on TV, they hear it everywhere, but they’re told “just don’t say the words.” We got a comment from a Grade 6 blonde girl at the end of one talkback—her teacher who had a Grade 6 and 7 split class, so he got permission from all the parents to bring them to the show at a high school—and in front of 300 strangers, she asked me how does the word “nigger” affect me now. And she didn’t say “the N-word,” she said the word “nigger,” and it was really awesome, because I thought: when will she ever use this word in this context ever again? When will she feel safe enough to use it? The only time she will ever probably use this word—if she chooses to use it—will be probably in a confrontational, possibly violent way.

This: How does the word affect you now? Obviously it affected you negatively when you were younger and that’s what led to the themes in the play. How does it affect you now when you hear it?

McKenzie: It depends on the context. Often, in writing the show, I had to come to terms with how I felt about the words. I kind of had a feeling about how I felt about the word “faggot,” but I didn’t know how I felt about “nigger,” because I had shut down a lot of those memories. I never used the word, I hated the word, and at one point I thoght the word should be banned and that we should get rid of them and that would take their power away. But I sort of talked my way out of that. Now, performing the show, it’s a day-to-day thing for me: some days I can say the title nggrfg without hesitation and depending on who it’s in front of, say it without shame. But sometimes, depending on how I’m feeling and who I’m talking to, I’m a little apologetic about the title, I will not say the name, I’ll spell it out, N-G-G-R-F-G. It depends on how I feel about the word on that specific day.

I think there are still better words in the English language to say hello to a brother or a sister, or a friend, or a loved one. The word “nigger” doesn’t need to be used. As for “Fag”—gay culture, we’ve really been known to take what’s used as weapons and flip them around, put a feather boa and some sequins on them and maybe some high heeled shoes, and then throw it in your face, and say, “You think that’s a fag? This is a fag.” And then we use it on each other.

It depends on context. I’ve sat in movie theatres, and I still cringe when I see same-sex couples kissing, not because it makes me uncomfortable to see them kissing, but I wait for that often-heard mumbling of the word “faggot.” We’re in the dark, no one knows who’s there, but it feels like it’s directed towards me. And that makes me feel unsafe. The words make me feel unsafe often, and this play has allowed me to feel safer using the word “nigger.”

What I’ve realized is that it’s not the word. It’s not the words themselves that are the negative—it’s the people and the reasons why the words are being used and in what context. It’s a different thing when a young student says I hear the word “nigger” all the time in the hallway, or I was called “faggot” last year all the time. When Aaron Webster was being chased through Stanley Park being beaten to death, being called a faggot, or blacks being called “niggers” all the time in the South in the U.S., it’s a different thing.

That’s all that we’ve understood up to this point, that’s all we’ve heard are the negatives about the words. If there are any positives—which I don’t know—it’s that the words have shown us where we have come from. And the words show us that if we’re not careful we could be back there very, very easily. And now the word “nigger” is being replaced by “Muslim.” Or “terrorist.” Anything that’s different is deemed unsafe or something to be scared of.

This: There’s a lot of debate, obviously, about what words we should be allowed to say. Can you give me some thoughts on why censorship misses the point in this case? If no one said “nigger” or “fag” again, some people would make an argument that that would be a great thing.

McKenzie: Yeah, it would be a great thing. I think we would find something to replace it that would be just as evil. I think the words “nigger” and “fag” exist for a reason. I don’t believe in accidents. I believe that everything here is here for a reason, and that’s my own way of being in the world. I grew up believing that God made a mistake with me, when It or He chose to make me. I was put up for adoption. I was adopted into a white family, so I was the only black child. And being the only black child in many of the small towns we lived in, I felt alone. Even though there were a lot of us in the family, I still felt alone. And when I realized that I was gay, which was at a very young age, I thought that God hated me. And through living now—I’m 42, I never thought I’d live to see 42, I didn’t think I’d live to be 12, let alone 42—I’m starting to realize that the words are here for a reason.

Language is not something to be feared. Language is delicious. I don’t necessarily believe that the word “nigger” is delicious, but I think that what happened within the school system here in Vancouver, and will be happening in Toronto in the next year or two, what’s happening with the students is delicious, because for the first time they’re able to exhale and tell their experiences and their fears, and their experiences with the words and what those words have done to them. That’s delicious to me, there’s nothing better than listening to a group of kids, students, discussing.

After the discussion they walk away with written commitments saying that we will stop homophobia and bullying and racism in our school. In places like Surrey. Surrey has a reputation, a Surrey Girl is easy, it’s kind of trashy, and low rent, and you know, I went out to the schools with my own ideas and notions of what Surrey was, and was blown away by how accepting [they were.] They had one of the largest Gay/Straight alliances that I’ve seen in all the schools I’ve been to—like, 20-strong, where queer youth can be themselves and walk through the hallways without fear of being beaten. Or if they are harassed, they feel safe enough to go to someone to get help.

I have my own prejudieces around the words. I used to think that black people smelled—I don’t know where I got that from. But I had somebody tell me that black people smelled differently than white people. That was a drag queen doing my makeup, believe it or not. And I was like, “Oh, Really?” And he’d kind of said what I’d always thought, and I’d always thought that black people smelled. But I’ve been around a lot of black people in my adult life, and there’s no difference, unless you don’t wear deodorant—we all smell if we don’t wear deodorant.

This: That’s an odd thing to hear from someone who’s doing your makeup.

McKenzie: Yeah, from a Drag Queen who’s doing your makeup. From someone who’s experienced their own forms of homophobia. And racism and homophobia are so exactly the same, I feel. They’re exactly the same, what happens to the person who is the target of either, the same things happen to them, in identically the same way. You feel fear, you feel less-than, you feel, at least for me, unsafe, unvalued, not worthy, the list goes on and on and on. I think the blacks that were hanged, and slaves that were caught and tortured and whipped, feel the same things that Matthew Shepard did when he was tied up to the fence and left to die. It’s the same thing that women feel when they’ve been assaulted. Women feel the same type of thing. There’s another word for women that’s the identical word for the replacement for “nigger” and “fag,” and you know what that is and I don’t need to say it. It’s all meant to oppress.

This: You’ve personally reclaimed those two words; do you think that society could ever reclaim them the same way that queer groups have reclaimed “queer,” the way that the black community has, to some extent, reclaimed the N word? Do you think that these things are desirable or possible?

McKenzie: I think as we become, as a society, more enlightened—and in some ways we are more enlightened—I believe as we go on, we will be able to. But it’s a long road. We seem to be going leaps and bounds in Canada as far as gay rights and human rights—gay rights being a part of that experience, or women’s rights—and teaching in school about bullying and homophobia and Gay-Straight alliances, and gay marriage, and all that stuff. And then you read in the paper 15 kids in North America killing themselves because they’re bullied because they’re perceived as, or are, gay or lesbian. And so there’s a disconnect there, and it’s confusing. It was confusing for me to see that happen in such a short span, and I think here in Canada… I think Vancouver’s the first school board in North America, and I think the world, putting a show called nggrfg in front of students. I don’t know any other school board is doing that.

George F. Walker

After decades of populist programming, serialized television has blossomed into an auteur’s medium over the last decade. This new golden age is marked by subtle characterization and complex narrative: American cable networks such as HBO and AMC have pioneered the revolution with series like The Sopranos, Mad Men and The Wire.

Here in Canada, playwright George F. Walker has emerged as a leader of our own televisual renaissance. Ten years ago, Walker took leave of the theatre—“it was time for a change,” he says nonchalantly—and embraced television, where, with his writing partner Dani Romain, he has since created and written three ambitious programs. His first foray into television, the criminal justice–oriented This is Wonderland, aired on CBC for three seasons. That was followed by The Movie Network’s The Line, which explored the blurred moral boundaries on both sides of the law.

Walker and Romain’s latest effort, Living in Your Car, co-created by Joseph Kay, premiered in May on HBO Canada. A single-camera comedy reminiscent of Arrested Development, it follows Steve Unger, a powerful executive who loses his wealth and family after being caught cooking the books, and is forced to live in his 2004 Mercedes S430.

“People used to like their sitcoms 22 minutes long and very loud, and they liked their dramas very quiet and whispered and very serious,” says Walker. “But now I think the world is much too complex to separate those things. There will be elements of everything.”

Eroding divisions between TV genres make the medium an ideal outlet for Walker’s sardonic social commentary. “They’re comedies about serious things,” he explains, adding that by focusing on character, he is able to address political issues without the clunky exposition.

Walker was working as a cab driver in the early 1970s when he submitted his first play, The Prince of Naples, to Toronto’s Factory Theatre. Since then, his storied career has resulted in more than two dozen plays and numerous awards, including three Governor General’s Awards, one for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. His works—prickly satires of corporate greed and urban pretense—often focus on those living on the periphery of mainstream society. Drawing on everything from the Theatre of the Absurd to the deft, character-driven tradition of Anton Chekhov, Walker’s plays grapple with some of modernity’s most pervasive dilemmas.

Although Walker left the stage, the stage didn’t leave him. “Dani and I try to bring theatre to television,” he says. “Basically every scene is a one-act play, and the actors get really good stuff to do, which is really what you’re trying to do in theatre—not waste actors.”

In addition to the new TV show, two new Walker plays will debut in 2010. And So It Goes, the story of a middle-class family’s struggle with financial ruin and a schizophrenic daughter, opened to excellent reviews last February, while King of Thieves premiered at the Stratford Festival in July.

Walker calls King of Thieves “a play with songs” for which he wrote the lyrics and dialogue. The play is loosely based on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, but transplants the source text to New York City right before the stock market crash of 1929. “It’s about who the real thieves are,” he explains. “Are the police the thieves, are the bankers the thieves, are the thieves the thieves—are they all thieves?”

Of his return to the theatre, Walker says, “It was just there.” He insists that it wasn’t a self-conscious decision to return to his old stomping grounds, but an outlet for reflection. “All this stuff is just sort of what’s on my mind,” he explains. “If I feel it personally, if I have an emotional response to it, I’ll let it come out.”