PuSh Play Episode 23: “Emergence (2009)” Transcript
Transcript
Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I’m Gabrielle Martin, PuSh’s director of programming, and in this special series of PuSh Play, we’re revisiting the legacy of PuSh and talking to creators who’ve helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.
Gabrielle Martin 00:23
Today’s episode highlights Theatre Conspiracy and Tim Carlson and is anchored around the 2009 PuSh Festival. Tim Carlson is a theatre maker, independent producer, and performing arts consultant. He co-founded Vancouver’s Theatre Conspiracy in 1995 and led the company as artistic producer from 2008 to 2020.
Gabrielle Martin 00:43
His work encompasses a wide variety of experiments with documentary, dramatic, interactive, and musical performance forms. His work, including Foreign Radical, Stray, and Omniscience, has been presented in cities including Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, Chicago, London, Edinburgh, Lisbon, and Berlin.
Gabrielle Martin 01:04
Theater Conspiracy’s critical inquiry and aesthetic curiosity contributes to a public dialogue activating freedom of expression, diversity and identity, and opinion, and challenges the status quo. Here’s my conversation with Tim.
Gabrielle Martin 01:21
We are going to dive into the history of theater conspiracy and your relationship with Polish. It’s a rich history. And just to contextualize where we are, we are here on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh.
Gabrielle Martin 01:39
We are also on Commercial Drive. Is this your neighbourhood?
Tim Carlson 01:44
one of my neighborhoods close by. Yes, okay.
Gabrielle Martin 01:47
And I actually grew up in this neighbourhood, so very familiar to me from the past, which is appropriate as we’re talking about the past. And we’re gonna start actually, we’re gonna start at the beginning, but I invited Tim to chat with me, with us today, and to ground the conversation around 2009, because 2009 was the year that PuSh presented live from A Bush of Ghosts, that Tim, you started, that you co-founded and started curating the Club PuSh series.
Gabrielle Martin 02:17
Also, that you worked with PuSh co-founder Norman Armour on Blackbird, which was a rumble, and Theatre Conspiracy Project, so there’s a lot in 2009. But beyond that, the relationship, official relationship with PuSh starts in 2006 with Tom Paine, based on Nothing.
Gabrielle Martin 02:36
And in 2014, there was also a couple collaborations, Myth and Infrastructure and Duets for One. So, let’s go back to the beginning. Okay, so I would love you to talk to us about how your relationship began with the festival, before the festival, and then about Tom Paine, and your work in the early presenting, producing the cabarets with PuSh in those early years.
Tim Carlson 03:03
Right. I guess I really got into PuSh when it was a presentation series right off the top. I think that was 2006. I was still working at Vancouver Sun as an arts and culture writer and I’d gotten to know Norman through interviews, seeing his work and you know starting a conversation and so I was excited about who it shows it began and then with theater conspiracy Richard and I did some one night PuSh cabarets in the early years.
Gabrielle Martin 03:44
So you and Richard were artistic, co -artistic producers of Theatre Conspiracy in the early days until you kind of took on the helm solo in 2008. That’s right, Richard. Until 2020.
Tim Carlson 03:57
Yeah, Richard moved on to Pi Theatre, and I ran Theatre Conspiracy until 2020.
Gabrielle Martin 04:06
And so can you, let’s talk about Tom Payne, what was that project and what was the process of realizing it for the festival and how did that conversation start? Was it, you know, did you pitch the project to Norman?
Gabrielle Martin 04:20
Did Norman come to you and ask if you would do it? Like how did that come about?
Tim Carlson 04:25
Yeah, Richard had a really great facility for finding new scripts that were emerging on the world stage. And that was most of conspiracy’s production work, aside from cabarets in the early years. And knowing what PuSh was all about, more experimental work, Richard found Willy Knows, Tom Paine based on nothing, house Scott Bellas, and Norman was interested in having what he called satellite shows when PuSh was still smaller.
Tim Carlson 05:14
And there was space and time at performance works that year, and it was a metaphysical monologue. An experimental one -person show that fit right into the PuSh aesthetic.
Gabrielle Martin 05:34
Okay and so and then you also did in 2006, in 2007, 2008 these cabarets at various venues that were like a PuSh, Theatre Conspiracy, a collaboration. Why the cabaret format? What was interesting? How did that that get started and and yeah and why the cabaret format?
Tim Carlson 05:55
Well, theater conspiracies started out doing cabaret shows where we would write one show and then we’d have bands, comics, performance art, and that’s really how it kicked off. And that started in 1995, various venues around town.
Tim Carlson 06:16
And it just felt natural for PuSh to have, you know, a cabaret space, a social space. And so we did that for three years at the Anza Club, the Wise, and Backstage Lounge on Granville Island.
Gabrielle Martin 06:37
Do you remember any, like, I know it’s a long time ago, but do you have any star performances that stay with you over the years? I know when you produce so many, it’s probably, yeah, we’re going a ways back, but we’ll come closer to the present.
Tim Carlson 06:56
into mine.
Gabrielle Martin 06:57
Well, let’s talk about Club PuSh because you co-founded that and then you curated it for many years, so what was different about Club PuSh from the cabarets that you were already doing with PuSh?
Tim Carlson 07:09
Yeah the cabaret idea grew just from various acts that Richard and I wanted to produce and then we said what about people coming to the festival if they do maybe they’re here for a show but they play music or do comedy let’s bring them into that became part of the curation.
Tim Carlson 07:31
Okay Norman was more interested once that was happening as well and then sometime around 2007, 2008 he came back from a festival in Europe that had a really great club social space where it would really involve everyone in the festival from the artists the presenters volunteers audience everybody and that’s part I think part of it was you know before that everybody after a show would disperse in various ways and this was a way to keep everybody together and then Norman could be part of every conversation other than just one at this part and one at that part so it was very much influenced by his social nature and one to connect together people yeah and those early
Gabrielle Martin 08:39
clubs, was that in performance works?
Tim Carlson 08:42
Yeah, it was in Performance Works, I don’t know, for the first five, six years, I think, which was great.
Gabrielle Martin 08:51
Yeah I mean it makes sense everything you’re saying about I imagine that then like the curatorial focus was just about kind of those eclectic pieces that might not fit in the conventional theater format and also you know works that inspired this this gathering in exchange or is there any any other aspect to that?
Tim Carlson 09:11
I think so. It evolved quite a bit, especially in the first few years, because we were looking for pieces, half local, the rest national, international, that really would thrive in a club environment.
Tim Carlson 09:33
And Norman had this phrase, a platform for experiment. So pieces that were new ideas from artists that we knew to do a first take on a new piece. And those were commissions as well. A handful of them were.
Tim Carlson 10:01
And then also ones that we heard about that were kind of developing some momentum that we would commission, that we would commission it also for Club PuSh to keep the development going. And I think the best example of that was Cliff Cardinal’s huff.
Tim Carlson 10:31
It had started in Toronto, Montreal, I think, then Eric Epstein brought it up to the Yukon and told Norman about it. And we thought we should, you know, help, you know, help bring the work down. Yeah, it just wowed everybody.
Tim Carlson 10:57
Not something maybe typically that you would program in a bar, but it had a lot of heat under it. Yeah.
Gabrielle Martin 11:06
length work at the time.
Tim Carlson 11:08
I believe so. Maybe it was a couple years before it got to a full run, but pretty much, I think.
Gabrielle Martin 11:18
I know it’s great to hear this history because you hear Club PuSh and you know without more context you might think you know a space for entertainment or when we hear cabaret and I mean it sounds like there was an element of that and that you know in the diversity of works that you were presenting that that existed but also that idea of a platform for experimentation that’s an interesting kind of intersection of having a kind of convivial club kind of atmosphere where people are also have the presence to engage with experimentation on that level yeah that’s
Tim Carlson 11:53
Yeah, it did evolve in interesting ways and for some reason Norman was really resistant to the idea of cabaret thinking that it meant something else, but another one of the inspirations was the kind of work that was being seen at Joe’s Pub at the public in New York and that we engaged there and under the radar was specifically made for Joe’s Pub and I think that’s where Norman first encountered Taylor Mac who was the first presentation that we did at Club Patient in 2009.
Gabrielle Martin 12:41
Okay And so 2009 as you know I mentioned that that was also an important year because PuSh presented a lie from a bush of ghosts
Tim Carlson 12:51
Mmhmm.
Gabrielle Martin 12:52
What was that project?
Tim Carlson 12:54
It was, we wanted to start experimenting with musical as much as we did with, in other kinds of performance. And we just, it was the 20th anniversary of David Burnham, Brian Enos, My Life in the Bushered Ghost, which was a very cutting edge sample piece, groundbreaking in its time.
Tim Carlson 13:26
And we just riffed on that really with a DJ band called No Luck Club, Tera Cheyenne, performing. I wrote the piece, Richard directed, and Cande Andrade did live video. Yeah, so I think it was very much in the PuSh mode and we had a good run of it while starting Club PuSh, so it was a lot.
Tim Carlson 13:57
That show unfortunately didn’t have a life after, because other things were funded and that was the usual thing.
Gabrielle Martin 14:08
But it was a premiere at PuSh. That’s right, yep. And then you were also, there was a relationship between theater, conspiracy, and the festival in an indirect way through Norman’s work with Rumble or through that project that he directed Blackbird which was a theater conspiracy.
Tim Carlson 14:28
Yeah, we had done previous co -productions with Rubble while Norman was at Rubble and was something we wanted to do again and Blackbird was a piece that Ian Heather Redd had seen in Edinburgh and were just, you know, gaga about and so we started, we had an opening at that time, I think it was at the College in March of 2009 and
Gabrielle Martin 15:05
And why were they so excited about this project? Enough to get you excited about it as well.
Tim Carlson 15:11
Yeah, it had great success with a run in the UK and I think Norman hadn’t directed a lot in recent years and it was a lot of production and he won Best Director at the Jesse’s that year for that.
Gabrielle Martin 15:30
And your role in that project was producer, were you also an artist in the work? No, producer. And then let’s jump ahead a little bit because my understanding is that there’s also another collaboration or multiple collaborative projects with PuSh involved, Rimini Protocol, your work as a dramaturg.
Gabrielle Martin 15:53
Can you talk to us about those projects?
Tim Carlson 15:56
Yeah, over the years, up until maybe about 2017 or so, I was involved with PuSh most festivals as an artist or as a producer, as a curator. So I also worked on a number of shows that came to the city like Mariano Passotti’s La Maria.
Tim Carlson 16:25
It needed a little bit of local tweaking in the script, so I did a little bit of adaptation, which that piece was just an amazing event.
Gabrielle Martin 16:41
Delupas, I know that they’re excited to talk about that work. We haven’t, I haven’t interviewed them yet, but I know that that’s a big, that was an important collaboration.
Tim Carlson 16:51
But Remini Protocol, that’s a big one to both, I think, for the festival and for me and my own work. I was in Berlin for a translation workshop and presentation of omniscience, a show that Richard and I did in mid -2000s.
Tim Carlson 17:16
And we were introduced to Remini’s work at that time, a show about a riff on Karl Marx. And what Remini does is really what I’d call conceptual documentary work, sourcing original material and using non -actors, people with experience somehow related to the subject matter.
Tim Carlson 17:47
And I was really enthused about this because it brought to mind, given my work in journalism, I was interested in applying my journalism background in a larger way to theatre that I was making. And Norman was going over around this time and I said, hey, you’ve got to see this show.
Tim Carlson 18:12
I think he was familiar with them but hadn’t seen their work before and of course started a conversation with them. And that was just when Cultural Olympiad was happening and there was some funding to really stretch in some new directions.
Tim Carlson 18:32
So I commissioned them to make a play based here, which became Best Before. And I worked with them all the time that they were here doing research, introductions, dramaturgy, journalism kind of work.
Gabrielle Martin 18:58
What an incredible collaboration. I imagine like how long were they there working on the development or were they here?
Tim Carlson 19:04
They came here for two weeks in the summer, and then a couple months prior to PuSh, when I remember it rained every day all the time. So they got the best and the worst. But it was quite an adventure because it was 200 game controllers, an audience of 200, each with a game controller wired in.
Tim Carlson 19:32
And there was, yeah, a lot of new technology to play with and adapt. That show toured, I think, you know, for a couple years around North America and Europe.
Gabrielle Martin 19:49
And was that the first time that PuSh had commissioned an international company to create a work for the festival?
Tim Carlson 19:57
I don’t think so, but I can’t put my finger on maybe to make a show here.
Speaker 4 20:04
Yeah.
Tim Carlson 20:05
That was 2010. 2010, yeah. Yeah, Olympics.
Gabrielle Martin 20:09
Okay, I’m curious from Tom Paine to, you know, when you left theater conspiracy in 2020, how you would say that theater conspiracies practice, interests, questions evolved over that time and your own practice into the present day as well.
Tim Carlson 20:33
Well, I think that Remy protocol example is good because it got me into approaching a new way of working where prior, I was writing, you know, what you would call well -made plays. Some of them were.
Tim Carlson 20:56
But then it became more of a collaborative, I think, on the creation, co -creation essentially, especially in documentary works, which were, well, for example, extraction, foreign radical, which is probably the best known, you know, touring show that we did, and a piece called victim impact.
Tim Carlson 21:24
And so ideas like that are still something that I’m working with. And also working on experimental musical pieces, like Bush and Ghost, like Tanya Markworth’s story. So those are continuing threads. And most of it, like I would lead the writing maybe, but largely co -created writing.
Gabrielle Martin 21:52
And how would you describe the cultural context of PuSh then and now, you know, whatever you want to share in terms of your reflection on that given your long history with the festival and its significance for theater conspiracy.
Tim Carlson 22:09
I guess the way that I look at it is in the mid -90s there were there was just a sudden burst of energy creatively and I’d say you know maybe entrepreneurial as well and Norman was very much at the center of that and animating a lot of companies were like well rumble of course but theater conspiracy new world so many other companies theater replacement of course and it did you know an ecology I think is the right word for it like there was just a lot of mutual support and interest sharing audiences sharing resources and PuSh really emerged I think the foundation of it was that local energy and Norman’s you know looking to the larger world of theater and saying you know Vancouver should be a part of that and the best work in the world should be coming here and we’d feed on each other I mean I think that’s what happened prior to PuSh there wasn’t a lot of local work going out and touring you know but now it’s almost the usual thing for you know a lot of the best theater makers making original work a lot of people are to it
Gabrielle Martin 24:04
And yet somehow it feels like there’s not enough, there are not enough presenters, local presenters, for the amount of local work that’s being produced here. Or maybe that’s always a, you know, sentiment amongst artists, but I think also, you know, with funding kind of tightening a little bit across the sector, those spaces, local presentation opportunities are still feel very sought after.
Tim Carlson 24:32
Yeah, I’m two degree. I think it’s always been the case, but the big difference is in the mid -90s We could work at other jobs you know put on a show with our credit cards hope for the best and Probably we can still pay our rent because You know a quarter of what it is now so the larger economics Make it so much different with the progress lab companies The college you know a lot of other companies There is a basis of support for new work and emerging artists That just didn’t exist 20 years ago and 30 years ago,
Tim Carlson 25:22
so That’s maybe the silver lining
Gabrielle Martin 25:29
Thanks so much, Tim. Thanks for sharing some of this history with us.
Tim Carlson 25:32
It’s a delight. Yeah. Thank you.
Ben Charland 25:37
That was a special episode of PuSh Play, in honor of our 20th PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. PuSh Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.
Ben Charland 25:53
A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on PuSh 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media at PuSh Festival.
Ben Charland 26:12
And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review.