There is a mammoth undertaking happening at the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario under the Artistic Directorship of Tim Carroll. It is called All.Together.Now, an ambitious expansion of the already impressive festival, which dates back to 1962. The impetus is inspired by the idea of interpersonal connection. The website reads, “We are losing the ability to talk to each other, to look each other in the eye, to disagree agreeably. Our devices keep our heads down and our minds distracted. We are losing touch with our own inner creativity… This Campaign will transform the Shaw into a buzzing campus of connection, creativity, and curiosity. A home for all those who wish to put down their phones and remember that they are alive.” A quote from Tim Carroll on the website reads, “I imagine, in a few years from now, a Shaw with a team of permanently employed actors who have consistent, reliable incomes that they can live on and plan their lives around. I imagine that we are busy creating the next generation of actors and leaders and inspirational people, and that we are providing not just the best possible theatre, but the best possible reawakening of the human spirit for anyone who needs it.”
This vision imagines the theatre not just as an event that theatregoers attend for two hours and then leave, but as a space that welcomes them to become more of a part of the Shaw community experience. While many of the All.Together.Now plans are slated for the future, one way that the Shaw Festival has already started to expand their community beyond the borders of the theatre space is through their podcast, which debuted last year: Let’s Get This Shaw on the Road. It is hosted by Nova Scotia’s Alexis Milligan and produced by Kelly Wong, and I was thrilled to have the chance to chat with them about how they create one of the best (and one of the only) Canadian Theatre podcasts.
One of the other aspects of the Campaign that has already been realized is the creation of the Shaw Festival Artist Village, which includes a digital studio. Alexis Milligan calls Kelly Wong “our digital master,” as before they started work on the podcast he had been creating the videos that they were using to promote the All.Together.Now Campaign. She says that with the creation of this digital studio folks at the festival were brainstorming about what else it might be used for- and the idea for a podcast had come up a few years earlier during the Covid lockdowns when artists were trying to pivot into the digital space. Since Milligan already had experience hosting a podcast, having done two seasons of the Finding Creativity podcast with Ian Sherwood, it made sense for Milligan and Wong to connect.
Wong is currently an “embedded” artist at the Shaw. He says, “usually we actors, we’re gig workers. We go contract to contract. As soon as one contract ends, we don’t know if we’re ever going to work again. That’s just the nature of the industry. The embedded artist program is experimenting around with what it’s like to hire actors… as full time employees. So, when we’re not on stage, we’re doing other stuff for the company- like making a podcast, creating videos for a capital campaign…- other people will teach classes, [or] help with fundraising and development. So, it seemed like a natural fit to loop me in, and to pair Alexis and I together.”
Milligan says that when she was asked how she had created the Finding Creativity podcast she said, “very specifically, ‘this happens because Ian Sherwood is the producer.’ … If we’re going to do [a podcast at the Shaw Festival] we have to have [a] person in that role… I like to nerd out about things…,” she says, “I want to talk to people who are equally nerdy as me, and get to our little nerd state where we can nerd out together. That’s my happy place. But, you need to have someone else who really has an eye, and especially an ear, for developing the sound and the shape and the whole tone of what you’re creating… For me to show up, to have my questions ready, to seek out the guests, to talk to those individuals, I have the easy job. It’s the producing part and the editing part that is the more complicated work… We really needed someone in that driver’s seat, and Kelly has magician skills.”
“I think of myself kind of like part stage manager, part producer, part editor, part host,” says Wong. He is in charge of making sure that all their guests’ schedules align with Milligan’s and his own, which he says is “such a challenge,” citing his admiration for the production stage management team who have to keep the entire festival in order. He also makes sure their guests feel comfortable and know what to expect, as well as providing them with some technical support if they need it, as they are setting up microphones and cameras in their houses. He also has to guard against technical malfunctions with the “wonderful but sometimes fragile platforms that [they] use to record.” He elaborates saying, “How to make sure that we don’t lose tape, which has come quite close at times.” He also then cuts the recording all together. “I view my job as an editor to not reshape the conversation, not to re-contextualize or represent anything other than what was actually said in the moment, but I want to make [our guests] sound like the most eloquent, polished versions of themselves.”
“Kelly also does all of our graphics. He designed our [logo], and he does all of the posters. We’ve got magnets and mugs out in the shop this year… it’s really an all encompassing role he has on that side of things.” You can also hear Wong chatting with Milligan during the introduction to each episode.
Wong has been with the festival for eighteen seasons. Originally from Calgary, he went to Sheridan College, and from very early on knew that he would love to someday work at the Shaw Festival, although initially at that time he didn’t think he would be cast there. “Not only was the colour of [my] skin a little bit different, but also the skill set I had to offer. I just thought ‘they don’t want my brand,’ but I was wrong.” He was cast in Sunday in the Park With George and a Noel Coward play cycle the second year that he auditioned. “I just fell in love with the place. I’ve heard it referred to as ‘summer camp for actors,’ and it kind of is because we all get to come together in the summer, see our best friends, we get to play at work and put on these shows, and then we would all go away in the winter and hope to come back the next year… I have also been afforded the opportunity to move from playing ensemble parts to a variety of heavier weighted roles… this company, TC (Tim Carroll) especially, affords me the opportunity to flex, exercise those muscles.”
Milligan arrived at the Shaw with Carroll, her partner, nine seasons ago when he became the Artistic Director. They had worked together for a few years before arriving in Niagara on the Lake. Her relationship with the festival dates back earlier to her days at George Brown’s Theatre School. “It was always the [plays] at the Shaw that blew me away,” she says. “I could really see a depth and a level of the performance work that was nothing like I saw on many [other] stages, and the ethos of the company, the family feeling- that it was a community- that you were invited into the community…” She remembers travelling to the festival with friends, and then suddenly being at Kelli Fox’s house for a barbecue with members of the cast. “So, now to be working here and to be a part of that, and to support it in my capacity as a Movement Director and Movement Coach, I feel very grateful that there is [this] specialized role [here]…, and then the support to do projects like this podcast, which is something that I adore, and it fills my cup in such a great way.”
Their goal for the podcast is “to be along for the ride,” says Milligan. “We want to be in the car with you. We want to be on the bus with you, and to start your Shaw experience before you’ve left the house… How can we start the conversation?” she says, connecting the podcast directly to the ideas of the All.Together.Now Campaign. “One of the wonderful things is not only is our audience for the podcast people outside the theatre, but it has provided a stronger sense of community within the business,” says Wong. “People from all facets of the company are listening to it on their drive in to work, because it’s the people that they’re in the building with [being featured on the show].” This year Milligan and Wong have expanded the number of guests on each episode, and have included some shorter conversations with folks who work on the more business side of the theatre. This includes Mary Margaret Murphy, the Manager of the Membership Services program. “We can not only give her the chance to tell her story and what it means for her to be in this festival, but also to let people know what membership is, because a lot of people don’t even think that there’s a membership element to the Shaw and what that actually entails,” he says.
Milligan mentions that they also spoke to two of the pit musicians who are playing for the musical Funny Girl, onstage at the Festival Theatre to October 3rd, Ross MacIntyre and Tim Mulligan. “A lot of people will come to see Funny Girl and not really realize that there’s an entire orchestra underneath the stage with some of Canada’s top musicians,” says Milligan, “… You hear their stories, and they’ve been touring Broadway shows for most of their careers, which is amazing, but also.. you could go down at intermission or at the end of the show and go down to the front of the stage and there they are. There’s a whole community underneath the floor. … I’m really excited about adding that portion into this season, and [to] shift to really getting into who else makes this machine go. There are so many moving parts that I feel like I’m learning so much as well as I talk to these people, and their passion for what they do, they really love what they do, and I think that’s been really exciting to uncover for sure.”
Milligan says that it is exciting too to get to chat with folks right in the thick of their work- often during a rehearsal process, and often while actors and crew are both juggling working on multiple shows. She mentions one especially memorable episode from last year where designer Gillian Gallow had to leave their conversation about Major Barbara for twenty minutes because she had “an emergency wig fitting” to attend to. Milligan said that she and Wong could have stopped the conversation and rescheduled it, or they could embrace this very specific glimpse into the reality of how the festival works and chat with Peter Hinton during those twenty minutes and welcome Gallow back into the conversation once the emergency was rectified. They chose the latter.
“You have to abandon the plan, and jump on the bandwagon of what’s in front of you, and you have to roll with it, and keep going because we’ve got to get this done… There’s a joy in that, there’s a playfulness in that- we’re not gripped by fear if we have to adjust. I think that is a really powerful measure of creative space, because creativity can’t work under fear. It just doesn’t. So, I think to have the creative ability to keep going with something, even though you’re not sure what that will be, is really indicative that this is a truly creative space where you’ve just got to take your hands off the roller coaster bar and put them in the air and go ‘WOOHOO!’” She laughs heart-fully.
On a practical level Milligan says that, especially for a festival named for a playwright like George Bernard Shaw, who may not be as much of a household name as he once was, even among theatre lovers, the podcast is a great way to give prospective audience members a sense of which shows are going to presented this season and why. “They can hear someone talk about [the show] with that passion, and the ability to articulate what it is [they’re] discovering because [they’re] in rehearsals right now… and the creative choices [they] are making. I think we can actually encourage people to come and see shows that they may not necessarily have chosen off the top because they heard something in the podcast that piqued their interest.” She says it also provides audience members with important historical context for the plays.
Wong says that he sees the benefit of the podcast when he looks at his parents, who have been coming to see all the shows he’s done at the festival, but “it hasn’t been until the podcast that they’ve really been able to really understand what I do… For them to be able to every week just put it on, and hear- not me talk about it- but hear my peers talk about it, has been really eye-opening for them.” He thinks that there is a bigger market out there for this podcast amongst folks who see the shows at the Shaw every year, but who just haven’t discovered the joy of podcasts yet.
Milligan says that the podcast also functions as a way to archive Canadian Theatre History. She cites their conversation with Sharry Flett last season about May I Have the Pleasure, who has been with the festival for 34 seasons. “I could do a whole episode with her just on the manners of the mandate and what it means to be an actor, to be that specific about every gesture… she has a depth of knowledge… I feel we are required to document this… because there is a legacy to this knowledge that we will lose if we lose Sharry Flett. I think that is our responsibility, and so there is an equally essential archival thing that is happening. We really found that with our Royal George episode last year that Kelly put so much energy and time into putting together.” Last year there was an entire episode dedicated to sharing the history and stories from the Royal George Theatre, which is being refurbished through the All.Together.Now campaign to become a carbon neutral fully accessible arts venue. “We’ve now put these stories in a container that is now part of the library,” says Milligan, “and we now have that as a resource to go back to, and people could use that in theatre history classes… it’s about documenting our experiences within the Canadian Theatre landscape.”
She has experiences on the podcast speaking with artists that she knows very well (“Damien [Atkins] and Jeff Irving,” she says dramatically, “I was like, ‘who’s running this interview?’”), but also with folks that she doesn’t know very well at all. “I have a very similar framework to the questions that I used with Finding Creativity, which is looking at how people engage with this concept or with their work. I have five separate categories that I work with…. I want to ask very specific questions that allow us to travel in an arc, and we need to hear about the show… I love to hear how they got their start in theatre.” She mentions that for some folks they took a sharp turn in the middle of getting a law degree, for example, while for others they made their professional acting debuts as children. “I really also love to hear about the challenges, or the ways that they have had to overcome something, or something that they’ve learned from this specific process that they’re going to take forward with them. And then my favourite question that we end with every time is the Easter egg.” She asks each guest to give the audience members a little Easter egg to look for in the show- something that they might not have ordinarily noticed or grasped the significance of. “It’s so cool to hear what they’re experiencing on the inside… I have those points that I need to make [about the shows], but I love the little side roads that we go down too.”
“We need theatre,” says Milligan. “We need theatre more than ever now. And we can find these communities- community outreach and engagement is so critical to the survival of our theatres right now. Our communities need us. It’s about producing these productions, but, I think what this podcast is also doing is connecting us. If we can feel connected, we feel better. Then that directly affects how we’re going to think of ourselves and how we live our lives.”
You can find Let’s Get This Shaw On the Road online here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In the most recent episode Alexis Milligan chats with Damien Atkins and Jeff Irving about Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, which runs until October 10th. She also chats with Mary Margaret Murphy, the Manager of Membership Services. New episodes drop every Thursday all season long.
Other productions playing this season at the Shaw Festival are Sleuth (to October 9), The Wind in the Willows (to September 27th), Heartbreak House (June 20-October 3), Amadeus (July 8-October 4), One for the Pot (to October 11), Ohio State Murders (July 19-October 3), and a New Work in Progress from Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (August 1-September 5). You can see Kelly Wong in One For the Pot, Alexis Milligan is the Movement Director for Ohio State Murders, Heartbreak House, and Amadeus.
For more information or to start planning your own Shaw Festival experience please visit this website.
