An Interview With Matthew MacFadzean and Cameron MacDuffee

CASP gratefully appreciates the permission of Matthew MacFadzean, Cameron MacDuffee and Robert Ormsby to publish this interview.

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Link to a Video clip of richardthesecond
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richardthesecond Poster

Matthew MacFadzean is an actor and playwright now living in Toronto. richardthesecond, his second Shakespeare adaptation (after Danespotting) premiered at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2001, and was reworked for the Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto shortly afterwards. The play has since received three productions in Toronto: at Theatre Passe Muraille in October 2002; for student audiences at the Al Green Theatre in October-November 2003; and as part of Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch Project in December 2003. Robert Ormsby spoke with Macfadzean and Canadian actor and producer Cameron MacDuffee, who was responsible for the production’s educational programme and whose company, Players By Nature, co-produced richardthesecond. In the following interview, which followed a performance for students in October 2003, MacFadzean and MacDuffee discuss the production’s relationship to Shakespeare, its popular cultural idiom and multimedia presentation, as well as its educational component.

RO:   Could you tell me how the show has changed over time?

MM: We did it at the Fringe in Montreal and it was awful. We didn’t know what it was, it didn’t make any sense. We had five televisions that we trundled onto the stage of the theatre. And I didn’t know what the play was about. We came back to Toronto, we had a month to rewrite and revamp it. Then we did it at Summerworks, and we won the festival, and then we took it to Passe Muraille. The design’s changed a lot. The references change every time. You know, I’ve gone through four different series of Survivor, one for each production. Pop culture moves pretty fast, so some of them I’ve hung onto, but some of them I’ve changed. It’s like anything, I think it’s improving with age, I guess, in a way. I’m getting more distance from it, too, so I can play around with it.

RO: When you say you’re getting distance from it, how do you mean?

MM: Well, I’m older, and the longer I do it, the more I realise how personal it was. And I didn’t know that when I started, and that has been a really interesting experience. You get more distance from the character, you know, you can tool around with it, it’s not all passion any more.

RO:   What about the different audiences?   How has it been different all the way along?   And what about the different spaces?

MM: What we got at Passe Muraille, which was kind of nice, was a claustrophobic feel. It had a real focus to the stage, so you could imagine him really trapped in this place. Here [at the Al Green Theatre] it’s so much more presentational. As much as my performance has changed to suit the younger crowd, it’s also changed—you know, I have to be bigger in a bigger space.

But the difference between doing the show for kids and adults is like different planets. The kids are ruthless, they will not forgive you for a false move, and they shouldn’t, which I really appreciate about them, they really shouldn’t. Adults—I don’t know, there’s a lot of jokes that are lost here [on the students], that are lost here entirely.

RO: Yes, I remember talking with Cam after the show about the specific references, and a lot of it is so specific. Last year at Passe Muraille, it was Steven Segal who nobody wanted to hang out with at the party, and this time it’s changed.

MM:   Yeah, I don’t even know who Shawn Desmond is.

CM: They got it.

RO:   I wasn’t sure what they would think about Electric Circus , maybe they were pissed off, maybe they go to Electric Circus , and thought that you were mocking them.

MM: Well, I mean, I am.

CM:   Part of the thing is that last year when we did it at Passe Muraille, we wanted to bring in some schools, and I had some trouble in that the school stuff that we were going to do there fell through…[and it would have been nice] not just to do the show for the kids, but to be able to explore those themes. My own company in particular is interested in things like sustainability and where we are going and what it means to us. And I think those are huge questions for this audience. Like, the kids today, they were saying how they were so bombarded [by the details of the show], and they were saying about how it was so much. And you [Matt] were talking about how they really are bombarded [in real life].  

They have immense power, because so much is targeted at them. They have a choice in the way that they can use that power and what I was interested in with doing the educational stuff was to explore that [power]. To say, you know, “You have a choice here. You can buy into this stuff or not, but just make sure that you consider the consequences of those choices.” And, “What are we buying into and why?” And I think that the difference between Passe Muraille and doing it here—at least from my perspective as the producing company—is what the kids will take away from it. It will be interesting because they are in a formative part of their life. A lot of the people we were doing it for at Passe Muraille—they’re still growing people, obviously, but they are coming from a different perspective. While these kids are a little more wide-eyed, and they take stuff pretty much at face value. So hopefully you can impress upon them to question pretty much everything that is out there, and what it means to them, and that they need to make choices that are in their best interest.

MM:   Almost consistently at the talk-backs after the show, early on there will be some one who asks a question like “So, what’s it about?” And it’s not like they don’t get it, it’s like “Can you confirm this for me?” And then you do, and it’s really cool. You know, I wasn’t expecting that they would be talking about themes and issues. And that is a great thing.

CM: But that was the reason for doing it here and I think that, at least from my perspective, was the difference in those audiences, just to see what the experience was like. And when we go to Harbourfront, it’s going to be back to that same regular adult audience, for the most part there. It will be an adjustment more for Matt, but it will be interesting to see what the show does in the different contexts.

RO: What is the tech setup going to be like at Harbourfront. I remember that you had two small screens at Passe Muraille, and here you have the one large one?

CM: Yes, there were two of them. They had different things going on on them. I think they were concerned that those screens really weren’t big enough, and the images weren’t powerful enough. So basically we have designed what we have designed here, it’s going to be almost exactly the same. We’re using this time to tweak it a little bit, to see what works and what doesn’t with the design that we have put in this space. The design is very different [in the Al Green Theatre compared to Passe Muraille] because of what the space demands. But it’s going to be pretty much the exact same kind of setup at Harbourfront.

RO:   When you came out right at the start of the feed-back session, Matt, you were talking about all of the people involved in the production. There seems to be so much focused on your character, but there is so much more going on in the production. How did the whole show itself come together? And was there any improv in those scenes with Gene?

MM:   There was a little improv. It took me a while to write, because I was trying to think of the live music, film, the computers, and I was trying to do that all at once. So it came in fits and starts, and bits and pieces changed from medium to medium along the way. But, of course, once you hand the script to the filmmaker, and say, “I want this”—some of the montage in the middle, we just grabbed kids off the street, and said, “Can you say this?” There was some stuff like that. But it was pretty tight, pretty tight, not a lot of room for improv.

RO:   What about the graphics? Did you just tell somebody what you wanted and he just went ahead and did it?

MM:   Which graphics specifically?

RO:   Like the sound levels.

MM: That was his thing. I said I wanted a screen with the test-pattern saying “This is what is on TV when it rains and the sun comes out,” and I wanted Eminem’s “Without Me” playing. And he said “Oh, what if I do this…” And I though it was fantastic.

RO:   Was there a live DJ in this show?

MM: No.

RO: But there was at Passe Muraille?

MM: There was at Passe Muraille.

CM: And there will be again at Harbourfront. The guy who does the music couldn’t do it [for the shows at the Al Green Theatre]. So we couldn’t get the full setup here, and the sound guy is acting in that capacity for now.  

RO: And at Passe Muraille, I seem to remember the DJ actually doing the flash himself by hand.

CM: Yes.

RO:   It just seemed a little more “alternative theatre” at Passe Muraille.

MM: This one’s cleaner.

CM:   There is an interesting thing with the Pass Muraille setup in that those guys were THERE and SO MUCH. And we really liked that setup because they were so present in the whole experience—which they are supposed to be, which is why they are on stage anyway. I think there was a difference in the feel there that you don’t get as much here and we are going to try to capture some of that back at Harbourfront.

MM: And because they are working as hard as I am, it’s nice to have. It’s nice to be showing the audience that this is what’s going on.

RO: What about the design element of the show, and the director’s and designers’ involvement as you have made changes each time you mount the show?

MM:   This time she had much less to do with how it was going to work than other times because there are so many factors involved in moving into this space….Rebecca Brown, the director and I have been fighting, and we’ve been fighting back and forth all the way from the beginning through each piece. With the original script, there’s three screens, a guy on stage, and a DJ. And then Michael [Gianfrancesco] came up with the idea for the light box, and that was brilliant, that made sense. So, you know, I have had less and less to do with the design choices because everybody else is so great. Everybody’s great. I can just let it go. Our designer Michael knows what kind of aesthetic I like, which is great.

RO:   And what about you, Cam, did you have any kind of directorial input?

CM: Not really. The whole thing with me, my company being involved in this was that I had been looking for something to produce at the time, as some of the projects I was working on at the time weren’t going very quickly. I talked to Matt about producing this show, because I knew that he had done it and he was interested in doing it. And I really went into it saying I have no designs on the show artistically. I liked what it said. It’s in line with the mandate of my company and the kind of things that we are trying to promote. I really just was interested in trying to make it happen.  

So, artistically, I have had really little say in it, but that is really by choice. I haven’t asked to be involved in that because there is, basically, a lot of competent people doing it. And that has been a really exciting thing, just getting people who are really good at what they do in those positions, and letting them do that. Money’s always an issue in anything artistic, but [I have been] trying to be able to let them make choices that are in the best interest of the show. I am trying to respect the artistic process because I am an actor, and I know what it’s about, while trying to find the money to make it happen the way they want it to happen. There have been a lot of compromises that have been made along the way, just because of those issues. But really the answer is that I am involved more in a producing capacity as opposed to a directorial one.

RO: So, Cam, your company, Players By Nature, came into the picture after Summerworks?

CM:   Matt had done it, and then I approached him about doing it and we decided to co-produce it at Passe Muraille.  

RO:   Today a teacher asked about the relationship between richardthesecond and Shakespeare’s Richard II, whatever that might be. You borrow passages from Shakespeare’s play, and we see the ineffectual King Richard in Richie Excellent, and then there is the whole issue of Richard’s and Richie’s split personality in the mirror speech in your production (and his biological splitting). How do you see the relationship between what you are doing and Shakespeare’s play?

MM: I don’t know. I think they compare in every way, in terms of what I do. Once I stumbled upon Shakespeare’s play, I thought, “Oh, that’s what I am trying to do.” So I just stole. I stole and I stole and I stole. I always feel, once I get into the Shakespeare part of the play, I feel the audience drooping away. You know, I feel like I am losing them. And that itself is sort of interesting. I mean, yeah, it’s not fair that I am just sort of flipping into it. It doesn’t warn them it’s coming, they are not ready for it and it’s a totally different language that pulls the rug out from under you. I just like it. I like unforgiving artistic choices. “This is Shakespeare now.” The comparison is there, it’s been coming in slowly, now let’s just flip right over to it. And use that as our story now because, again, the comparisons are everywhere. A story about an eloquent and inefficient king—again, it was exactly what I wanted to be doing and I didn’t know that. So once I discovered Shakespeare’s play, I was like “That’s what I am trying to do.” And then I knew what I was trying to do.

RO: Yes, I remember you saying that you were originally this raver who became an omnipotent ruler.

MM: Yeah, I became a huge celebrity and I had all these speeches and everything. There was no story, no structure, and no rise and fall. And then, again, Shakespeare’s play and “Oh, yeah, of course.”  

RO: Do you want to add anything to that Cam?

CM:   Not really, it’s totally Matt’s choice. To me, the parallel was always the king of pop culture, the king who shouldn’t be king. I loved what you [Matt] said in your notes about how the parallels sometimes are—in looking at Richie Excellent it’s sort of saying are we, as leaders of this planet, are we like Richard II was? Do we make choices that are not in our own best interest? And what does that mean for us? For me that has always been the defining parallel between the two. What are we doing as leaders, what are the choices that we are making, and where are they taking us? And we need to look at ourselves, and we need to find the answers to that.

MM: Again, that comes from Shakespeare, that wasn’t my idea.

RO: What about the whole issue of a tech-heavy show being used to investigate issues of technology? Do you want to talk about that a bit?

MM: It’s the only way to do it. You come up against arguments like “It’s going to be really hard. We’re going to have to do all this, it’s going to be expensive, it’s going to be a pain in the ass, it’s going to be all those things.” And it has been all those things, it’s been unbelievably hard a lot of the way. But it’s essential, it’s like “The medium is the message” kind of thing. We’re doing a show about over-stimulation, and we need over-stimulation, period. It just makes sense.

CM:   What you said about using technology in theatre—and not to get all petty about it or really artsy about it, but the evolution of theatre, and people’s interest in theatre, especially when you are watching with a teenage audience like today. I mean, technology is becoming omnipresent in our society, and some people sometimes think theatre’s a little bit antique.

MM: Boring.

CM: Right, so how can you, how is theatre going to evolve too, in terms of maintaining interest for people that are over-stimulated? So can we add the technology into this type of theatre to keep them interested, and yet it still is live. So we are marrying these media to reveal something about, again, “The medium is the message,” the same type of thing. But I think there is an idea about where theatre is going and how it can remain relevant to a changing world.

MM: The other thing is that—we’re patting ourselves on the back a little bit, but we survive well in front of teenagers, we survived well. You know, I wouldn’t mind watching that if I were a teenager. I might like it or I might hate it, but I wouldn’t mind. If this was Stratford, or another play, they’re not going to care. They’re not going to care at all. So I think it helps us, especially with this audience, to have the technology in there, to have it moving pretty fast. Because it’s not theatre they’re used to.  

CM: Hopefully it’s sort of cultivating an interest in it too. That they’re going to find something in this that they wouldn’t find in theatre before because it comes closer to speaking to them on their level than them having to go further to reach it. I was reading some of the stuff that was written about the show last year, and how some of the older audiences had to come as far to meet some of the pop culture references here. But sometimes we need to come a little closer to this audience to try reach them. I think that that is what this manages to do. It’s not just that you’re expecting them to come along for the ride when they don’t really speak the language that you’re speaking onstage. Last year, we got some support from a company like Mirvish Productions in a variety of ways, because we talked to them about the fact that this is—we’re the future of theatre. Like: “Your audience is dying, like what are we investing in? Where is it going? And what are you doing to cultivate a new audience for theatre?”

RO: So, are the Mirvishes going to replace DuMaurier [as a sponsor of theatre]?

CM: Well, Harbourfront’s doing the same thing, and we’ll get into that initiative. What Harbourfront is doing in supporting this type of thing is that there’s got to be a shift in some ways. There’s still always going to be an audience for certain types of theatre but if you keep the value in this and show society what the value of it continually is, you’re going to have to adapt with that society as it changes. And I don’t mean, again, not to pat ourselves on the back, but I think that is what I was interested in.

MM: I would hate to do a show for kids. The idea of doing a play for kids is—I would never consider doing that. Like doing a school tour. You know a lot of actors do that at some point, but I just don’t have the—whatever—for that.

RO: To pat you on the back, they did seem to like what they saw out there today. Though Cam said that the other day some students were throwing pennies at you.

MM: It’s not what they’re used to, so they don’t have as much respect for it sometimes.

CM: I don’t know if we can teach them that or not.

MM: I don’t mind if they do or don’t. You know what? I don’t mind if they go and see other plays and kill them, kill what they’re doing. They should, that’s what’s great about them, it’s that they’re so honest. Every time I go into my little rap thing, you know, you get these homeys in the audience who are rapping in their sleep at this age. And I’m the thirty-one year-old going rapity-rap, rap, rap, rap. There are always a few points in the show where I’m the old guy. But for most of the time we pull it off.

RO:   Have you both done Shakespeare before?

MM: Not professionally. I’d love to. It just hasn’t worked out yet.

CM: I did a little bit. I was more into it when I first started acting. When I first came out of theatre school I was trying to be serious, but I realized that I am not a big fan of doing Shakespeare. I mean, I appreciate it, but I don’t really get off on it as an actor….There is something in the curriculum about taking works from the 20th century, or Shakespeare, or classical works, and adapting them into their own little scenes or plays that they do. We tried to take some of that into the classroom, and say “This stuff is valuable, how is it valuable in a modern context?” And “What can you do with it and what can you find in it? Use some of the same elements we do, or use it in the way that you want.”  

MM:   Shakespeare is always so relevant—well, I won’t say that, it’s nothing new.   But when I see good “derivative” [i.e. adapted] Shakespeare, I just think it’s some of the coolest stuff.   I remember seeing Lepage’s Elsinore a few years ago and it was just wild.   Just not to be bound by what Hamlet is and to go inside and play around.

RO:   Could you tell me more about the educational function of the show?

CM : I think that I have imposed that aspect on it, more than Matt, really.   I mean, Matt does it [the show] and it speaks for itself, and that’s enough.   I think the mandate of Players By Nature, what we’re trying to do is use stories—and arts projects and theatre—but storytelling to try to inspire people to consider their lives in different ways.   And look at their lives and say, you know “Are there things about the way that we work in our community that aren’t really conducive to our own well-being?”   If you can inspire them to consider those things, I want to try to take it a step further and say “Here are some things you can do”…. Not to ram it down anybody’s throat, nobody can tell you the way to live, especially with teenagers.   I wouldn’t even begin to try to say “You should be this way or that way.”    But just to make it as easy as possible for them to explore those things if they want to.  

And that is really what the educational materials are about, taking it that extra step into the schools and say, “Ok, what’s this about, discuss it in your classroom.”   And another element of the teacher’s guide is what we call a community directory.   It’s not as extensive as we’d hoped in this particular version, but basically what it does is try to say “Link the classroom stuff to the larger community.”   So whether it’s encouraging them to go out and usher in theatres, and take in more theatre or whether it’s encouraging them to volunteer for an organization that works on whatever issue that they’re interested in, it’s trying to create something which is holistic.

I think theatre is brilliant because it’s community building, in my mind.   And that’s why I go after using this medium anyway, because it brings people together.   It’s something that’s different from a lot of the other media today because it does that.   So if you can use it to try to not just—you know, it’s valuable on its own, but if you can inspire people to add something else to their community as well, and create all these different arts organizations and community organizations.   Working together for the diversity and health of their community. And not to get soap-boxy about it, that’s just what my ideal is with it, and that’s why I developed the educational materials, just to make it something that is a continuous experience.   Not just as a theatre one, but one as they become, you know, people that are contributing something to their society, and not just led wherever TV tells them to go, or their culture is telling them to go.  

RO: You were saying that the different schools have come into the experience in very different ways.

CM: When we sold it to them, we were saying that it would be interesting for not just   arts students or media arts students but also social studies and Canadian and world studies.   So there’s a variety of courses that it could be relevant to.   I think that some schools are coming at it from different contexts, depending on what their interest is…And that’s good, too, because hopefully you’ll get those students who might not be as interested in theatre-going into a theatre and getting the experience that they wouldn’t get otherwise.  

RO:   What about you, Matt?   Ho do you see your role in the educational component of the production, including the question-and-answer that you do at the end of the show?   Are you mainly answering questions about theatre?

MM: It seems that way.   Cam’s doing all the work as far as the educational material goes, but what my position allows is for them to see the show, and then have an opportunity to ask whatever is on their minds, about whatever they decide.   Questions about the play, or themes, whatever.   And that is where Cam and I cross over nicely.   We both believe in the same things and we’re both interested in effecting the same kind of change.   I just get to be more of a voice of it and hopefully they respect me enough that what I’m going to tell them is going to land.   That’s the luxury that I am allowed.

RO: Matt, they asked you today at the end if somebody else is going to be doing this show, or if you can envision somebody else doing this show.   Are you planning any runs after Harbourfront?

MM: We’re hoping to get enough “important people,” such as producers, down to Harbourfront to see the show because we would like to tour it.   That sort of seems the next logical step in the thing…. In terms of somebody else doing the show, I think that is more of an interesting thing talk about than a reality.   I don’t think anybody will want to do it.   It’s a pig of a show to put up.

RO: What about televising it?

MM: I thought about that.   I talked to somebody at CTV, but that sort of fell through.   But, yeah, that would make sense to me.   I think that really would be an interesting project.   Ideally, I’d love to do the show where he’s in a room where all the sides of the room are screens.   A box of screens—that would be wild.