I’m not one for end-of-year lists of accomplishments, but 2023 was a year of unprecedented growth for Same Boat Theatre.
Following up on last year’s milestone of producing my new play Whale Fall, which won the 2022 Hamilton Fringe’s Critic’s Pick Award, the start of ’23 saw our company learning that we’d been accepted into the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Ironically, when we talked of potentially touring the piece, Vancouver topped the list of potential cities. After all, no city is as connected to the orca as Vancouver and, within the play, the character of Becca starts her journey looking West over the shores of the Georgia Straight.
Though we applied for grants, we knew the only way to get out West for the September festival was to raise the funds beforehand. And the only way to do that was crowdfunding. Adding up the costs and per diems to send all four of us out there totalled roughly $10K, a tall order for any crowdfunding campaign. But thanks to the ingenuity and community ties of director Aaron Joel Craig, the company put together a terrific Kickstarter campaign with great rewards for backers alongside a winning story for why we needed the funds.
After almost thirty days of pushing the campaign on social media, and with help from friends in the community, we were all astonished when we achieved our goal! So many backers stepped up and supported the project. And it happened just in time for Aaron to take Stephanie and Ray and myself back into rehearsal to hammer out a new draft before leaving for the West coast. While this had all been happening, we got some more good news about Whale Fall. The play earned the Special Merit Award from Theatre BC’s Canadian Playwriting Contest. So, by the end of the summer, we were ready for Vancouver.
I’ve written before about our tour, and you can follow our company’s Instagram posts alongside the posts of Aaron, Stephanie and Ray to get a sense of how epic it was. But it really can’t be said enough how this leg of the tour brought the company together, and enriched our work on the play. Being part of the environment where this story takes place, and having the chance to actually see whales with our own eyes, was just magical.
We followed up Vancouver with a return to the HCA and the place that started it all. With sell-out crowds and glowing reviews from audiences, we were primed to finish the tour at Toronto’s Red Sandcastle Theatre in the city’s East End. The transition to this smaller space meant a chance to explore the more intimate moments of the show and it was a treat to present the piece to Toronto audiences. Indeed, everyone who saw the show connected with the themes of grief, hope and awareness of our changing world. And if they shed a tear along the way then, as Aaron said, “we’ve done our job”.
In an article for Beyond James, I wrote about why it’s important for artists to bring their material on the road. Touring builds up a piece of performance while also testing the resilience of the artists involved. The fact that Same Boat Theatre is planning a new season for this year and next is, perhaps, a testament to why artists need to continue to take chances on their work. Certainly, that was the case with this play which started out as a love letter to my daughter.
As the company approaches our tenth anniversary, we’ve had a chance to look back on more than just the year 2023. With a history of new play development at the forefront of our work together, Same Boat is looking forward to 2024 and beyond with an eye towards bigger horizons. From growing our company, to establishing partnerships and producing established plays, Same Boat Theatre is taking the lessons we learned from this past year so we can move forward in the New Year to bring dynamic theatre to Hamilton.
Looking over West Vancouver from Prospect Point (Photo: S. Hope Lawlor)
Let’s make one thing clear.
The Escarpment doesn’t compare to actual mountains.
This past September, Same Boat Theatre took my award-winning play Whale Fall to the Vancouver Fringe Festival. The company had won a spot in the Vancouver Fringe lottery. As luck would have it, it was the only lottery we won after our Critic’s Pick Award winning premiere run at the 2022 Hamilton Fringe.
During our first run, as we saw how receptive audiences were, the company often talked about taking the show on tour in ’23. Vancouver was always at the top of the list for obvious reasons. The play’s narrative starts off in Vancouver, and deals with an issue that directly concerns audiences living on the West coast. So, being selected in the Vancouver lottery seemed like a sign.
The day we left for the West, eventually arriving exhausted to our load-in and tech at the Pacific Theatre, was perhaps the longest all of us had spent uninterrupted in each other’s company. Yet, as tired as we were, the power of the mountains and the waters of the Georgia Strait seemed to beckon all of us from our humble city of Hamilton.
These are the mountains and waters of the play, after all.
Ray Louter amid the trees of Redwood Park (Photo: S. Hope Lawlor)
We had an amazing run at the Vancouver Fringe. The show earned audience accolades and some terrific critic reviews. But, just as important, it bonded all of us together as a company. In downtime between shows and show promo, we took time explore the city and the surrounding areas. We traveled to the mountains of Whistler, took a ferry to Bowen Island and, of course, went whale watching. During our stay together, we would often cook meals or simply unwind after a particularly busy day in each other’s company.
Vancouver wasn’t a vacation but rarely has a “business trip” (theatre is all of our careers) felt so un-stressful. That said, being away from home is always hard. We all missed our respective families and friends. In particular, myself and Aaron would often call home at the end of each night to give a long-distance good-night to our young children. For all the beauty and insights into the show that Vancouver gave, we all looked forward to coming back home when the Fringe was done.
That’s why it’s a such a gift to be back at the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts to present Whale Fall as part of the HCA Dance Theatre’s PASS 23-24 season. There is something altogether inviting and unique about the HCA Black Box space. The way the blue of the lights wash over the stark white of Becca’s ‘boat’, or how sound never seems to echo despite the size of the room, itself.
It is, without a doubt, one of the most intimate of spaces in the city.
Stephanie and Ray in the blue wash of the HCA Black Box (Photo: S. Near)
It’s a big part of why we decided to first perform the piece at HCA last year, and why coming back to it now, feels so right. Despite the story being set on the West coast, Hamilton is the community that first breathed life into Whale Fall. And it’s largely this community that gave the project wings in our Kickstarter earlier this year so we could make it to Vancouver in the first place.
So it’s fitting we come back here… before we set off on the next leg of our journey up the QEW to Toronto and the Red Sandcastle Theatre. I hope you can join us and that you’ll let us know what you thought of this project afterwards.
Towards the last third of my play Whale Fall, there is a scene in which the character of Steven (inspired by myself) is recalling a story of taking his daughter Becca (inspired by own daughter of the same name) to Marineland. Specifically, the scene depicts Steven and Becca seeing Kiska, the so-called “loneliest orca in the world”, alone in her tank swimming in circle after endless circle.
The scene is based on reality. And that’s why it makes me cry.
The decaying sign in Niagara Falls advertising Marineland (photo: S. Near 2023)
In 2012, shortly after the birth of my daughter, my wife and I traveled to Marineland. I had never been there but, as Steven says in the script, the “ugly orange tiles on the rooftops of the buildings had all been lifted from the commercials that filled my childhood”. As anyone who grew up in the 80s can tell you, Marineland formed a signature part of television tourism. The images of breaching orca, playful seals and the familiar jingle “Everyone Loves Marineland” were odd touchstones. Of course, back then, I had no idea of the horrific implications of these images.
On this particular trip, I knew something was wrong. I was a new father, living in a new city, and trying to find my way around. And here I was, finally visiting this touchstone from my past. And it was turning out awful. Within an hour of our arrival, I wanted to leave. But then, my daughter and I saw Kiska. As anyone who has seen the play can recall, my daughter’s fascination with orcas started the day she saw Kiska… even if she can’t quite remember it now all these years later.
Video of Kiska from 2012
Captured off the coast of Iceland in 1979 at approximately three years old, Kiska was eventually transferred to a tank at Marineland. Kiska gave birth to five calves while in captivity. Tragically, all them died while they were young. During her captivity, Kiska often showed the kind of abnormal and repetitive behavior–banging her head against the tank, swimming in circles or floating listlessly–that whale biologists have identified as signs of boredom and extended stress.
Years later, the Kiska scene in Whale Fall was one of the first scenes I wrote when crafting the play. It was the first scene I brought to the Theatre Aquarius Junction when I started writing, the first scene I shared with other artists, and it always hits me so hard because of how firmly it’s rooted in reality,
Earlier this year, while on a trip with my family, I heard news: Kiska had died.
It wasn’t a surprise. Tragically, as the lone orca held in captivity at Marineland for years, it was perhaps a surprise that she had lived as long as she did. But it hurt all the same. When I sent the news to the rest of the Whale Fall team, the responses ranged from sorrow to relief that she was no longer suffering. But, perhaps, the most heartfelt was Ray:
Facebook thread re: Kiosk’s death
“Koosh” is the signature line of the play. It represents the sound that orca make as they exhale and, in so many ways, has come to symbolize the enduring power of these animals in the story of the play.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Kiska since the company began revisiting the play in preparation for our run in Vancouver this September. Since premiering the show last year, the Whale Fall team have been honing the piece and revisiting almost every facet of the script and production. Certainly, there are new scenes that were added. And, of course, there are bits that have been cut. But, honestly, it’s the things we haven’t changed that are most intriguing.
And one of those things is Kiska.
Ray Louter and Stephanie Hope Lawlor in the “Kiska scene” of Whale Fall (photo: S. Near, 2022)
The devastating authenticity of this scene remains pretty much intact from when I first wrote the words inspired by that trip many years ago.
It is my hope that when we take this show out to Vancouver, in front of audiences who may well have had the opportunity to see these magnificent animals swimming in the Georgia Straight or the Salish Sea – literally in their own backyards – that the message of Whale Fall will hits them in the same way that the Kiska scene always hits me.
When I start a project, the first things that come to me are usually about sound. Whether it’s a particular song or album that becomes the soundtrack to my work, or the way an actor reads a specific line, my process is almost always audio driven.
It was a surprise for me that Whale Fall broke this trend.
Admittedly, I had been assuming I’d be pulling inspiration from whale songs, and that’s been true to a certain extent, but the main touch point for me in this project is a photo I took on our first day of rehearsal. I’d borrowed an instant camera from a friend for a trip that I was getting ready to take with my family (more on that later), and decided to bring it along to our first read. After a work through of the script, we stepped outside onto the rooftop deck at the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts, where I took this picture of Ray and Stephanie.
Steph and Ray at the HCA
It’s not really that remarkable, two people standing on a balcony, but as it developed slowly, I could see so much of the show in it immediately.
One of the things that Whale Fall about is the strain of trying to hold a moment in time. The characters in the show are both holding a version of each other that’s more about a memory than a reality. Or maybe a wish of who that person might be, or might have been. It’s often this way in families. Especially looking back, we remember our parents or our children in both kind and less than kind ways. But when it comes to memory, we tend to be pretty unreliable narrators. We don’t get it exactly right in the retelling or the remembering.
There’s this thing that parents do with their babies (or at least what my partner and I did when our kids were smaller), where they spend much of the day and night just trying to get them to sleep. You’re really just completely focused on getting through, and then the minute you’re out of the room you find yourself looking at pictures of your kids, or talking about how cute that thing they did was, even though it was making you crazy.
It’ll never be that same thing ever again.
You’re already busy remaking and cleaning up the hard stuff, to try and hold on to the moment in your mind, because before you know it, it’s day one of school, or they’re rolling their eyes at you in front of their friends, or they’re going off to do the thing they dreamed of doing. My kids are still pretty young, so I won’t pretend I totally understand the really big shifts that are coming down the road. But the feeling at the core of those moments is something I think I’m starting to get.
There’s this quote, often attributed to Heraclitus: “No one ever steps in the same river twice, it’s not the same river and they aren’t the same person”. I guess I bring that up to say that, even if we capture a moment in an instant photo or in our minds, it’s only that very second. It’ll never be that same thing ever again.
For me, that is the big question of Whale Fall. What’s the thing on the horizon, and how do we get there together?
It’s that reality that each of the characters in Whale Fall are grappling with, both forwards and backwards in time. Becca wishing that she was able to return to some moments with her dad, and Stephen wishing he could help direct Becca’s way forward more than he’s able. Both are rolling over memories in their minds, trying to find the spot that if they ‘could just change that one thing’ something might be different. But you can’t change the past. You just get to choose what you do with it going forward.
In rehearsal at Eucharist Church
For me, that is the big question of Whale Fall. What’s the thing on the horizon, and how do we get there together?
This is the second part of a roundtable discussion about the upcoming production of Whale Fall by Same Boat Theatre produced in partnership with the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts as part of the 2022 Hamilton Fringe Festival. The first part can be viewed here. The participants in the discussion are playwright Stephen Near (SN), director Aaron Joel Craig (AJC) and performers Stephanie Hope Lawlor (SHL) and Raymond Louter (RL)
Please note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AJC: A good story will give you a jumping-off point of a longer, different kind of conversation and it also gets inside of us in a different way than raw data does. Steph, I’m interested, you said earlier that so much of the orca information is kid-oriented and we talked about Stephen thinking he thought his Rebecca might grow out of that, and I was thinking about how people can think that the work that we do in making theatre is something we’ll grow out of. Now we have to reorient the way that we work and I am interested in recapturing some of the “childishness of this work.” The interest in playing pretend in front of people.
SHL: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every kid grows up playing house, playing school, playing make-belief. We all want to try on different identities at some point and I think that’s why people come to the theatre, it’s why people want to see these stories, because maybe they think they’ve grown out of the ability to play make-belief, but they still hold on to that need for imaginative play and escape and that need for a different world. Yeah, sometimes that world is not the one that we’re in. Sometimes that world is more magical or has more musical numbers or has a big dance finale, and sometimes that world is scarier. You know, we watch Black Mirror, we watch all of these spooky Netflix shows because we need that escape, that relief from the outside world. We’re holding onto these ideas of climate change and extinction and what that means for us, for our families, our children, our legacy, and that’s an awful lot of pressure that builds. 28:57 I think to see it can be therapeutic in a sense, it can be cathartic. To see these stories on stage, maybe, offers some hope, so that then you come out of the theatre and you think, “Okay, there’s still work to be done.”
SN: And I think that’s it. It’s so overwhelming that people feel powerless. How do you present work that addresses that thing that people need to pay attention to, but that’s overwhelming sometimes? Not just because it’s an impending problem, but it also touches upon grief. I’ve heard this said that we’re all acutely aware on a conscious level that we’re in very big trouble, so we’re going through a consistent feeling of grief, but we sort of push it aside. Trying to make people pay attention to that grief is really hard, so part of that becomes having to give people a measure of hope. You have to tell your story in a way that will get people to pay attention, to take some action. I think a lot of people minimize it because they just feel so powerless.
SHL: Emotionally, we’re desperate to minimize it.
SN: I guess that’s what I wanted to tap into with this story. To paint one character who is not powerless, who can do something, who says, “I can go find them no matter what, wherever it leads me.” That’s the voice that I tune into. You can throw all the obstacles in the way, but if you have a character who is laser-focused on a goal, that’s a story that people will be interested in watching.
AJC: That’s why all of those marine stories are always about the horizon line, Moby Dick…
SN: The Old Man and the Sea.
AJC: It’s always about going towards that thing that is ungraspable. That’s the thing about the horizon, you never get to it. In this show, there is no question that this is going to cost her something. When it comes to climate change paralysis or general crisis paralysis is that we are hesitant to put ourselves on the line. So many of us have spent the last few years living in constant fight or flight. I think about the orcas attacking their so-called trainers, and yeah, if you’re living in fight or flight your entire life, sure, that makes sense. And I won’t spoil the show, but there is that question of what is the cost, and how that ripples out beyond the play, but also for us, what we think about climate change. One of the reasons society minimizes it is because it’s expensive.
RL: There’s so much that I want to react to in what you’ve all said, and the first is the need that human beings have to play. It doesn’t end with childhood, we often talk to children as though it should. We run down play activity as peripheral, not productive, all that kind of stuff, but I increasingly have come to believe that there is great wisdom in engaging with audiences where they’re at. I think partly it’s a way of drilling down into something, to enter into a deep knowledge of something. Are there lessons in the play? I think there are all kinds of lessons, all kinds of things you could turn into a study guide about the play, but I think there’s also a re-kindling of the human need to play. We don’t want audiences to walk out and say I’m going to sign up for greenpeace tomorrow, but the audience walking out feeling a whole bunch of stuff, feeling so much stuff that they just can’t not respond. I think that’s why kids play, and that’s why we play, and even the people that don’t come to the theatre are still busy playing. Just watch people engaged in all the random creative, nonproductive activity: singing songs, telling stories – we are meant to tell stories. The other offer I would make, which is a non-western way of thinking about theatre, is that this play is potentially a kind of medicine, and the healing might be that it slices just into our anxiety and fear about what we’ve done and what it’s done to these relationships, and it reveals things, but it also injects that wound with something new and something healing. I think that’s, in the end, what makes it not just a show for young audiences or old audiences. Children are honest. They’ll look at you and say, “Tell me the truth,” whereas adult audiences have adopted all kinds of strategies for dealing with their boredom. I really think that the power of what we’re doing is that it affects all of us and it does something to us that’s good and healing and hopeful.
SHL: Something that we haven’t really touched on in this particular conversation is yes, the play is about climate change and the whales, it’s about these big huge massive themes, but we learn about it through such a personal lens. We start to understand those larger concepts, these bigger feelings of grief and of climate anxiety through this relationship between father and daughter. We think about how these big ideas are reflected in our relationships in ways that I don’t know if we’ve ever really felt. And that, initially, is something I loved in reading that short bit at the Junction, was this connection between father and daughter and the memories that come up and the indelible effect of this relationship on her and how it’s what makes her able to handle crisis.
AJC: It’s interesting too, the connection between the relationship between the father and daughter in the play and also the way that we understand that whales are familial animals.
SHL: They travel in pods.
AJC: And as humans, we are also influenced by the pod that we’re in. There’s research being done that suggests the fight or flight gene gets passed on to your kids. That’s how humanity and every other organism has lived, they pass on those good instincts. In the play, there is the question of what are the good instincts in Stephen that he passes on to Rebecca? We don’t get to choose what our kids do with the things we give them, but we hope they take the good stuff and take it in a good direction. That’s a big part of this too, and for families who will see this show, I think that’s an interesting thing to keep in mind.
RL: I’m interested in exploring the relationship between Stephen and Rebecca, but also the time disconnect in the play. Where is this guy? What’s the space that he inhabits? In some cases, I feel like that’s everything. It’s shattering, it’s optimistic, it’s gift-giving, it’s saying goodbye, it’s all of that. As an actor, I think about the range of that, and I’ll tell you, I’m daunted at all of it. The present tense bits, not so much. I get it, it’s give and take, you do a little Stanislavski. Then suddenly, it’s like the time and space and kind of all at once, and that’s why it is not just a character on a quest to do this thing. It’s both of us going somewhere to do something dangerous, and it’s going to be hard and there are going to be tears and sorrow, but there’s love and hope and care.
SHL: And it’s necessary for Rebecca. Ray, we touched on this last week in conversation. You say you’re daunted – being on this trip together, the two of us navigating this together. And as Stephen and Rebecca that’s true, and as actors that’s true. It’s just us! There are other characters that come in and out of the story, but ultimately it’s the two of us.
RL: We were just talking about dropping lines. The actor’s nightmare, right? I just feel completely emotionally overwhelmed at the tides of our world falling apart but we’re here together in this space, in this time, with these audience members and we’re going to be okay.
SHL: And this is singular. This moment, this time. This performance.
AJC: And it will never happen again like this.
RL: Every moment, every time you do the show is stepping into that possibility. If audiences get that from a show, you have them forever.
SHL: It’s the breath. The life. It’s the koosh. The koosh of it all!
RL: The koosh of it all!
SHL: It’s the liveness
RL: The alive-ness. The risk.
AJC: I’m so excited being four people in a room right now, but when we get an audience in a room… all in the room together. We’re all aware of the way we are in the room together now. And it’s inescapable.
SN: It’s a healing circle, is what it is. That’s really powerful.
AJC: For the next 3-5 years, the only way I want to work is in the round. If we’re going to be in a room together, let’s be in a room together. Let’s re-engage these muscles and say, “This is how my body exists in the room with other people. I remember that and I see that moment land on that person’s face, and what does that make me feel?”
SN: I’m really so glad that I’m doing, that this project is being done with this group of people. There’s something really quite special about that for me, and I don’t know that I could do this any other way. I just knew if I was going to do any sort of piece coming out of the most trying, stressful, emotionally hard time that has had me even question whether I even want to to do theatre with a piece that’s like inextricably tied to me and my identity such that the main characters are named after me and my daughter, I can’t do it with a team that’s anyone but you three. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Aaron, you and I have collaborated on almost every piece I’ve done since 2013, and that’s pretty mindblowing. Ray, I when I came to the city was you had me up at Redeemer teaching a playwriting workshop and as you were talking to your students, I thought wow, this guy really gets it. And Stephanie, I had heard about all of the work you were doing at HCA and with Rook’s Theatre and I didn’t see Venus in Fur –
AJC: Huge mistake!
SN [To Aaron]: But you saw it, and immediately you sent a text saying, “We have to work with Steph at some point, we have to work with her.” It was always this thing of missed opportunities. “When are we gonna get to work with Steph? She’s busy!”
AJC: Turns out, all that had to happen was the world had to end.
SHL: Just a pandemic.
SN: But you’re right, you were the first one who brought the voice of this Rebecca to life, and it was just like, I can’t think of anyone else who can possibly do it. There is no one else.
SHL: And it was one of those magical moments where I read it and I thought there’s no one else who can possibly do it! I have to be the one to say these words, to go on this journey. So I’m so glad that morphed into the reading, and now this production. This play is so special.
SN: I’m just really glad that we can do this. And that we’re doing it at HCA as a BYOV. HCA has such a great tradition in this city of bridging the different age levels and artistic disciplines, and I think it’s really lovely.
SHL: And what’s going to be exciting is that you can show up on a Sunday morning and catch a show for the youngest members of your family, then a show created and performed by adolescents, another show created and performed by teens, and then a show that is resonant whether you are 10, a teen, an adult. When we talk about intergenerational theatrical experiences, that’s exactly what’s coming together at the HCA BYOV.
AJC: There’s a real thoughtfulness and awareness of what we hand down to kids, our values and the way we re-introduce the things that we love. That’s one of the things that, whether it’s the work HCA is doing, or the Fringe, our that we’re doing, they’re all sharing something you love with your kids and the community. That’s the real gift of getting to do this again, and doing it now. I have an acute awareness of the gift of getting to share these things with people after not being able to share anything with them for so long.
SAME BOAT THEATRE 