Q: Have you seen it as part of your mandate to influence culture?
I’m profoundly antipathetic to theater as message carrier. I’m really a bore on this subject. Yeast is a better model. You don’t tell it where to grow; it just does. Regent has worked the way yeast does. That’s how I see how PT functions. I do believe we have significantly shifted the culture of Vancouver.
I never set out to change the culture with PT. I have a primal urge to make plays — that can be plays I’m in, or write and direct, or put my friends in. It’s others’ job to decide if I’ve done that with excellence and integrity.
We Mennonites tell a story of a man being asked if he’s a Christian. He responds, “I don’t know. Ask my neighbor.”
Q: What’s an example of a surprising production for a company devoted to exalting Christ?
“Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train.” That’s a gospel play about sin, repentance, forgiveness and new life. And it starts with the Lord’s Prayer interspersed with expletives. We have an extraordinary audience, whether people of faith or not.
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is on the other end of the spectrum — you can bring the kids to that one.
“The Foreigner” is another example. It’s not even religious. It has a hypocritical, nasty pastor of cliché. And the least become the greatest, and the mighty fall. That’s essential gospel. I doubt if the playwright would agree! I didn’t pick it for that reason but because it’s a good play and it balanced the season.
Q: Should churches be offering to host theater?
When a church is in duress, it can cause crankiness. Holy Trinity Anglican has leased to us. [At first] we resisted their invitation. We didn’t want to be in a church building. Their first question was, “What role will Holy Trinity have in approving the plays you put on?” I said, “None whatsoever.”
We wouldn’t be a theater company if a church had any say at all. And there’s never been a peep from them. We do shows that are way out there: language, sexuality, unorthodox theology. The church has never said, “Can we meet? Parishioners are murmuring.” That’s astounding.
It takes a special congregation to let you do it on your terms. We have our own entrance — not through the church lobby. We have complete use of the theater at all times. The church may have hoped folks would ask to find out more about the church. I’m not sure that’s happened.
They did want to serve their community, however. A theater, offering content, does that better than a day care.
Q: How do you think about your work theologically?
You have to love the characters. That doesn’t mean you have a crush on them, or they’re a mentor or a role model, but you can’t sit in judgment on them. An audience can smell acting like that a mile away. If an actor is in judgment on the character they’re playing, they will not do a good performance.
That’s an incarnational approach. In “Freud’s Last Session,” I played Freud rather than C.S. Lewis. I entered into the experience of asking whether God is a delusion and unhealthy.
When I’m in the role, it’s kenosis: having a form of Ron, but not counting the nature of Ron as a thing to be held onto, but emptying myself, and taking the form of the character in a play [Philippians 2:6-7]. That’s my job.
Now, in the incarnation, Jesus still carries the very nature of God, even though he emptied himself. When I write truthfully and well, without spin or manipulation, that too will express me, embody me, have my fingerprints on it, will be made in my image and likeness.
Q: What light does your experience throw on institutional leadership?
I’ve always been a leader, but I’ve never meant to lead. When I started PT, I didn’t want to be its leader, but I started it.
I wanted to pull together a collective of artists and decide together how we’d do it, but then I realized that most people don’t actually want that. Most actors want a good role to do with their whole heart.
Most parts of the work I do, initially I hated. But I realized, “Do you want to do that play? No one else is going to do the budget. If you don’t want to do that play, go sell car parts like your dad.” He loved cars; I love stories.
Aesop tells a fable of the ants and the grasshopper. The ants are busy all summer gathering food and building their hill, while the grasshopper just plays music. Winter comes, the ants close up the place, and the grasshopper wants in. They won’t let him in. That’s how Aesop means it to be read: “Get to work!”
But that’s completely wrong. Is it possible the ants worked better because they had music? They didn’t tell him to shut up when he was playing! Wouldn’t it be nice to listen and dance now that they can’t work as hard? Maybe that’s not true of ants, but it is true of us humans.
The arts, at the simplest level, lift our spirits a little. I’m half ant and half grasshopper. Most of the time, I wish I were out fiddling. But I’ve also got to carry the picnic basket so everybody can eat.
I saw this in my firstborn daughter in the church nursery. Thea is not bossy or a bully, but she’d say, “Let’s do this!” and people joined in. She just came up with cool ideas. I have the same disease.
Images: Pixabay and F&L.
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