Q & A with John Beale

John Beale is a Toronto based actor, teacher and director. A graduate of The Philippe Gaulier International Theatre School in Paris, John also trained, performed and taught extensively with Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Massachusetts and is now an artistic associate with reWork productions in Toronto. This is John's first year teaching at the Volcano Conservatory. 

We spoke to John to learn a little more about his class, "Presence", and his approach to teaching:

Q: Can you tell us about "Presence", the course you’ll be teaching for the Volcano Conservatory?

A: With this work we discover the ways in which we reveal ourselves and how we hide away. This form connects us with our enormous pleasure to play but then presents us with the formidable task of making everyone burst out laughing. Our ego rushes in to save the day either pushing too much or shying away. This fear of failure brings out all our tricks we use to avoid being exposed. It's when our best intentions fall flat the pretense of the ego is revealed. The rug is pulled. The thin ice cracks and what is uncovered is a beautiful, sensitive, vulnerable presence behind the slipping mask of ego- a presence that fills the room. We show up. It's very powerful. So in the end it's not about being funny or goofy or small or cute it's about showing our true presence. Paradoxically the goal we set out to achieve in the first place happens by accident. There is a burst of laughter but not a derisive or pitiful laughter, it's a huge heartfelt, belly laugh at the human condition. The audience falls in love. 

Q: What about the experience of teaching in the Volcano Conservatory are you looking forward to?

A:What a great opportunity to be under one roof with such a great collection of teachers and students drawn from all corners of the performance world. 

Q: Who should take your class? Why?

A: The form is studied to discover one's clown. For actors it's Jedi training - an essential workout to become more sensitive, open and connected to your audience. For non-actors it's a practice of facing fears, showing up and finding a powerful connection with others, opening that channel between you and them. Everyone will have the experience they need. People come to this challenging and rewarding work when they're ready. 

Q:  You offer this class for performers and non-performers alike. What’s different about working with those two groups? What’s it like when they come together in class?

A: I always prefer working with a range of ages and experiences in the room. Having a large cross section of participants enriches the ride for everyone. A lot is learned through observing. Actors witness how present non-actors can be by accident and non-actors see how it's possible to craft these "accidents". 

Registration is open for all courses in the Volcano Conservatory. Don't miss out, spaces are limited. Check back soon for interviews with some of our other illustrious instructors!

Q & A with Suvendrini Lena

Suvendrini Lena is a neurologist who is particularly interested in conditions that explicitly alter the fabric of consciousness – epilepsy, dementia, psychosis and migraine. 

She works as the Staff Neurologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and at the Centre for Headache at Women’s College Hospital. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Toronto where she teaches medical students, residents and fellows. She also teaches a course called Staging Medicine which is a collaboration between The Theatre Centre and U of T Postgraduate Medical Education.

In addition to her impressive medical pursuits, Suvendrini is also a playwright. Her first play, The Enchanted Loom, inspired by an experience in a neurosurgical OR, will be produced by Cahoots and Factory Theatre in 2016. She is a playwright-in-residence at Cahoots where she is working on a second play entitled Rubble. She is currently scientist in residence at The Theatre Centre where she is developing an interdisciplinary work exploring voice in schizophrenia.

Suvendrini tries to explore a different crevice of her dusty old brain, or someone else’s, everyday.

For inFORMING CONTENT 2016, Suvendrini will speak on the way that our brains process colours, windows, our time webs, and life lines now, in our digitized world.

Q: What would you like us to know about your current work? 

A: I’ve been studying/learning/practising neurology/neuroscience for at least 15 years now. I’m struck by the accelerating pace of change in my field driven in part by the convergence of computation science and neuroscience in efforts to map, and really to transform the nature and boundaries of consciousness. I used to go to science fiction movies (which I love) and think I was watching a vision of the future. Now, I often feel like I’m watching the past. I don’t know who can imagine the future anymore.

Q: Can you tell us about a piece of art that you saw/read/heard that changed your perspective?

A: Einstein on the Beach (Opera, Phillip Glass) –  in which numbers are inherently beautiful and both totally abstract and absolutely real. I felt that I understood something about infinity afterwards. It is four hours long and celebrates repetition and so I saw it twice.

Written on the Skin (Opera, Martin Cripp & George Benjamin) and My Name is Black (Novel, Orhan Pamuk). Both stories about love and murder and medieval manuscript painting. I’m fascinated by the representation of the infinite within the miniscule. The scientific parallel would be the way the cellular and molecular world seems to expand ever inwards as one descends into it through a microscope.

Q: What’s your most creative solution when you’re feeling blocked or stuck in your work? 

A: I walk among tall trees or near water. My favourite strategy is to do it at night. It’s a good way to confront the shadows. 

Q: What motivates you when you’re feeling uninspired? 

A: We live. We breathe. Inspiring, expiring.

I work with people who are often very ill, sometimes dying. In the course of my training I have seen a lot of degeneration, suffering and death, in the young and the old. The knowledge that life is very short and little is truly within our control is ever with me. And so, as long as I am alive, feeling, sensing, breathing, moving, I am not uninspired.

Everyone is welcome to attend Suvendrini's lecture at inFORMING CONTENT 2016. You can register here! 

inFORMING CONTENT Preview: A Chat with Alanna Mitchell


Alanna Mitchell is an award-winning Canadian journalist, and author, who writes about science and social trends. She is a global thinker who specializes in investigative reporting. Her book, Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis, is an international best seller that won the prestigious U.S.-based Grantham Prize for excellence in environmental journalism. Her one-woman play based on that book was nominated for a Dora award and has toured nationally and internationally. For inFORMING CONTENT 2016, Alanna will deliver a talk on the potential reversal of Earth's magnetic poles. Here, she answers some questions about her work and her inspiration. 

Alanna Mitchell

Q: What would you like us to know about your current work?

A: I am working on a book about the potential reversal of the Earth’s two magnetic poles. North will become South and South will become North. As that flip happens, the Earth’s magnetic field, which helps protect life on the planet from solar radiation will decay, becoming only a tenth of its normal strength. The last time the poles reversed was 780,000 years ago.  

Q:  Can you tell us about a piece of art that you saw/read/heard that changed your perspective?

A: Ravi Jain’s Gimme Shelter. At the end of the one-man piece, Ravi left the stage and each member of the audience had choose someone on the other side of the theatre space and physically and emotionally connect — would you let this person drown rather than enter your country? It was shattering.  

Q: Have you collaborated on artistic projects before?

A: Yes! My play Sea Sick was a full-on collaboration that would not have happened without the help of Franco Boni and Ravi Jain. Together we developed a script and then the two of them directed the play while I performed it. 

Q: What was the most unexpected discovery that came out of this conversation?

A: That the process was just as important and the final product. Revelation! And so wildly different from the journalistic process, where it’s all about what ends up on the page. 

Q: What’s your most creative solution when you’re feeling blocked or stuck in your work? 

A: I read beautifully written non-fiction. Or else I sleep and the words come to me. 

Q:  What motivates you when you’re feeling uninspired?

A: Going for long walks. 

Hear Alanna's contribution to inFORMING CONTENT on Friday, April 29, 2016 at 6:30pm at The Theatre Centre. Tickets are free and can be reserved here. 

On May 1, come see Alanna's work interpreted by a group of experimental performing artists led by artistic leaders from Toronto and beyond. Tickets are free and can be reserved here. 

You can learn more about Alanna's work by visiting her website. 

Q & A with Neema Bickersteth and Gregory Oh

Neema Bickersteth is the creator and star of Century Song, seamlessly moving through the worlds created on stage by song, dance and art. She is accompanied on piano by Gregory Oh, who creates improvised soundscapes along with Debashis Sinha (percussion and computer). Here, Neema and Gregory reflect on the Century Song journey.

Neema Bickersteth

Gregory Oh

Q: What moment in the show always delights you/takes your breath away?

NB: Well, there are many moments that literally take my breath away leaving me a sweating, panting mess... but I love the very end of the show when I feel like I'm really a dancer moving in only light, no other visual distractions, just me in my body as myself.

GO: Delight: when Deb whips out his suitcase of toy instruments.

Breathtaking: City Kid visuals!

Q: What artist from the past century do you wish more people knew about?

NB: Kathleen Munn. We are using a work of hers from the 20's -  of a nude woman painted in the cubist style.  She was experimenting with styles that were very different than most of her peers in Canada at the time.

Composition (Horses), Kathleen Munn

GO: Gerard Grisey. Vortex Temporum is one of the greatest works in the entire 20th century canon. 

Q: Do you listen to music to get ready before the show? What music?

NB: Nope I don't listen to anything. We're making so much during the show, it's nice to have a bit of quiet.

GO: Never. Generally all I ever hear is Deb getting fanboy about buying 17 more Gigabytes of sound effect samples, but I don't really listen.

Q: This show’s been in development for 5 years. Have you ever done anything else that took five years?

NB: I don't think so but... I went to university for music for 7 years. I had 7 years of development/waiting before getting pregnant with my baby. Hmmm... now I'm interested in what will happen to Century Song after 7 years!  

GO: Wooing my current partner.

Q: Can you tell us about a surprising or memorable moment during the creation of Century Song?

NB: During the making of what we call the Orlando video - I was surprised at how good Momme looked in the afro wig!

OH: There was the time we arrived at the NAC Ontario Scene Festival, and I was warming up on the piano, and using all sorts of extended techniques inside and outside to play the instrument, and somehow the little vibrator I was exciting the treble strings with slipped out of my hands and under the strings and into the action. Vibrators don't turn themselves off, and the only way I could get it out was to remove the lid, unscrew the keyblock pins and remove the entire action. It took a long time. It felt even longer. The technical crew was not impressed.

Q: What moment from the past Century do you wish you’d been a witness to?

GO: The 1998 Rose Bowl. National Championship! Woodson!

Either that or Nam June Paik's "First Accident of the 21st Century".

Catch Neema and Gregory in Century Song, running January 19-23 as part of Progress. Tickets can be purchased here.

Q & A with Ross Manson

Volcano Artistic Director Ross Manson joined the team of Century Song as director in 2011 and has been keenly devoted to its growth and development ever since. In this post, Ross reflects on some of his favourite aspects of the show.

Ross sits at the piano during an early workshop of Century Song

Q: What moment in the show always delights you/takes your breath away?

A: Whenever Neema sings. Which is often. But her ability to sing the incredibly complex Aperghis vocalise while dancing the incredibly complex Alton choreography, for example, is breathtaking. Every time.

Q: What artist from the past century do you wish more people knew about?

A: Olivier Messiaen’s life story is enormously interesting. He had a happy life into which horror intruded - this would be in France and Poland before and during the Second World War. We have 2 compositions of his in the show - one from his happy pre-war period  when he was in love and working a lot (1930s), and another - called Vocalise for the Angel who Announces the End of Time, which is part of his Quartet for the End of Time (1941) - which he wrote in a Nazi POW camp, after his wife had gone mad and he had lost pretty much everything he held dear. The premiere of this piece was in the camp, with an audience of guards and prisoners in the outdoors in cold weather. There were only three other musician prisoners, and so the piece was written as a quartet for the instruments they happened to play. It is a towering piece of music in the 20th century. In our show, our arrangement of this music accompanies a series of images by German Expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz. It is a section that exemplifies what artists can show about the experience of war.

In addition, a large part of the work we did on the show was to look into the history of black women in Canada from the early 1900s to the present day - this to inform the emotional choices Neema makes while singing. There are MANY things in this history that I would guess the majority of Canadians know nothing about. There's the bulldozing of an entire thriving neighbourhood in 1970 in Vancouver (called Hogan’s Alley) to make way for a viaduct that was never actually built. The neighbourhood was mixed race, but predominantly black. Among the residents displaced was Nora Hendrix, the grandmother of Jimmy (who used to visit his grandmother in Vancouver as a child). There’s also the community of black farmers who moved to Alberta from Oklahoma in the early 1900s. They were answering a Canadian government ad campaign inviting American farmers to Alberta. The new black arrivals were not what was expected and were so unwelcome that the government of Canada began another marketing campaign in the USA - this one to discourage black immigration. There’s also the fact that black women working in munitions factories during the 2nd World War were often given the most dangerous jobs, and paid the least. But there’s also the jazz scene in Montreal though the 30s and 40s - the only major North American city at the time where white and black musicians were allowed to share the stage. And then there’s the rise of black women’s feminism in the 1970s - a powerful and articulate movement calling not only for liberation, but for justice. Black history in Canada is rich, and, sadly, mostly unknown. 

Q: What moment from the past Century do you wish you’d been a witness to?

A: The first performance of Quartet for the End of Time in Stalag 8A in Poland. As Messiaen later wrote of the experience: "never have I had an audience who listened with such rapt attention and comprehension."

Q: Do you listen to music to get ready before the show? What music?

A: The music FROM the show is in my head whenever we do it. And that’s ok.

Q: This show’s been in development for 5 years. Have you ever done anything else that took five years?

Yup - most Volcano shows take this long to take shape, give or take a year or two.

Ross during the green-screen shoot in 2013

Q: Can you tell us about a surprising or memorable moment during the creation of Century Song?

A: When Greg and Deb are given too much time on their own while on tour, it’s like watching brothers at a family get-together - with Greg as the misbehaving little brother, and Deb as the long-suffering older brother telling the smaller one to knock it off. Lots of eye rolls. I love it. I love this team. It’s a deep joy working together.

Century Song begins January 19 (preview) at the Theatre Centre as a part of Progress. Tickets are available now. Learn more here. 

Q&A with Michela Sisti

Michela Sisti is working with Ross as  as the Assistant Director for Century Song through Theatre Ontario's Professional Theatre Training Program. Michela takes us behind the scenes as she learns more about creating experimental, interdisciplinary theatre here in Toronto: 

Michela Sisti


Q:Why did you want to work with Ross Manson on Century Song for this training opportunity?


A: I want to get really good at creating interdisciplinary theatre.  I started directing when I was living abroad in London and I began by staging plays quite conservatively.  Then I got into devising work with actors and found it incredibly nourishing and eye opening.  The realization that we can make anything, do anything, speak anything we want was utterly revolutionary to me. What I learned from our experiences was creating good theatre that honours all of the talents involved in the creation process is difficult. It’s difficult and it is worth spending the rest of my foreseeable future learning to get it right.


My first encounter with Ross’s work was going to see A Synonym for Love. It was opera uncorseted, gleefully liberated from proscenium arch-land and it was genuinely playful.  I loved it.  I moved to the UK the following year and it was there that I began reading up on Volcano’s other shows.  This company was kick-ass.  Not only were they bringing together music, movement, strong visuals and spoken dialogue in their work, they were also crafting their shows around poetry, history, science, and things that were happening to people in our world, now.  I kept thinking to myself, this is what art is supposed to be: absolutely bottomless.  The small, the big, everything in between.  Life is too short.  While I’m here, I want to make some of that!


Putting on a piece of theatre is kind of like inviting a whole neighborhood of people over to your home for dinner. Some of these people might be old friends; most are complete strangers.  Your job as the host is to serve up a fresh, well-made meal.  (I might have stolen that phrase from Mike Alfreds.) By the end of this meal you might want your guests to feel nourished.  Or you might want to leave your guests not quite satisfied and wanting more. You might want to give your guests a burst of inspiration, that could cause them leave half-way through the dinner in order to cook up their own suppers. You might want to delight your guests with the array of flavors you’ve drawn together, or the presentation.  (Some of those flavors might turn people off - that’s cool, you’re not going please everyone.)  People might be stimulated, galvanized, provoked by the dinner conversation. Whatever goes on at that table it’s the relationship with the people you’ve reached out to and who’ve come, that has to be honoured. When people are taken for granted, ignored, forgotten, art can become tyrannical and abusive.  This is something I want to try to stay vigilant about.


Q: What have been some of the highlights of the experience so far?


A: The people! Playing around together with ideas! Problem solving!


Century Song’s final development week was focused on reinterpreting a movement from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which will be replacing a semi-improvised musical section from the show’s previous run.


Messiaen’s quartet was originally written for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.  The challenge was to reinterpret the piece for piano, soprano voice and whatever else the combined musical genius of Gregory, Deb and Neema could come up with.


In the B section of the chosen movement, "Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time", a cello and violin drift along the same winding staircase of notes, in their upper registers, three octaves apart from each other, in pure, sustained tones. 


Early in the process the team decided that Neema would sing the cello line on a pure vowel. After a bit of experimenting, it turned out an ‘oo’ sounded best. But what instrument would sing above her? 


The team came up with an eccentric list of candidates: the Theremin (a contact-less instrument you play by manipulating an electromagnetic field with your hands!), the musical saw, the Ondes Martenot (1920s synthesizer) and an array of sounds Deb conjured up on his computer.  We had two restrictions to work with. The first was a practical one: whatever was chosen would have to be something Deb could realistically learn to play between now and the performance. The second restriction was artistic: if we were going to honour the original piece Messiaen had written, we would need to have two joined voices, moving as reflections of each other over the glass footsteps of the piano line.  So we needed to find a sound that had the same bare, vibrato-stripped quality of Neema’s "oo"s.


Finally this idea was proposed: Neema would sing with… herself! 


Deb had found a way of capturing Neema’s voice through a microphone and producing a live, three-octave-higher, Neema doppelganger.  Fun! Brilliant!


I learned early on that a big idea expressed during Volcano’s development process is a wonderful, dangerous thing.


In Volcano-land Ross and the team give ideas the dignity of formal experiment.  The idea is put into action and tested.  A hundred and one questions emerge, and offshoots of offshoots of questions, which are tested in turn.




Neema Bickersteth
Photo by John Lauener 

Q: What moment in the show takes your breath away?


A: Neema’s semi-improvised ‘Blood Dance.’  I watched it first through a computer screen - Ross had given me a recording of the Ottawa performance to look at  - and it was one of those moments when you have to pause the video and ask, did I just see what I just saw?


When I attended the final development week of Century Song I saw part of the dance live, with the percussion rattling and cracking through the room. Witnessing the live performance was a whole other experience– much more visceral. You feel in your own body the sonic vibrations that are moving the performer.  And there was a meditative quality to Neema throughout all this, in spite of the frenzied nature of the dance, which drew all the explosive energies of sound and movement to one deadly centre. It was as if a vortex has been created on stage.


The Blood Dance percussion now rips out of the tranquil, undulating belly of Messiaen’s  "Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time".  And Neema now wears a boiler suit and a red head-wrap – the uniform of a female munitions factory worker of WWII.


The sum of all these images is grim, but there is something regenerating in conjuring up these events of from past into the present, and all of us looking at them, together, in the face.


On a lighter note, wait till you get a load of the fettFilm animation. I defy any jaw that does not drop and swing from its hinges.


Q: What artist from the past century do you wish more people knew about?


A: I think a lot of the artists whose works I love are already pretty well known…or at least within the circles of the people who like them!  Two 20th century composers I keep coming back to are Gyorgy Ligeti and Arvo Pärt. Both composers have this ability to dissolve a room with their music. Ligeti builds landscapes of sound that take you hostage. When I listen to his Atmospheres or his Requiem I feel as though I am being pulled deeper and deeper through shifting, transforming worlds.  And then Pärt – it’s as if the man composes with light!  There is a beauty and a spiritual clarity to his music that demolishes anything peripheral, that lays everything else to rest. 


I would love to take an armful of art and music and literature from the 20th century and drop it into the lap of a completely different era from the past and see what people make of it.   What conclusions would they draw about us?  What would they reject? What would they be moved by?  I think it would only be worth the time travel if I were allowed to get in on the communal art discovering.


Q: What moment from the past century do you wish you had witnessed?


A: Excellent, more time travel!


I actually don’t know if I’ve ever wished to be present as a witness during moment from the past century. So much of what comes to mind when I first hear the words 20th century is the stuff of nightmares – wars, genocides, state terror, mass disillusionment, environmental degradation.  But then, on the other hand, the 20th century also brings to mind people who were brave and compassionate, people who had visions of a better world and who devoted their lives to creating the good kind of change.


This prompt question is actually a really good exercise because it essentially gets you to be honest with yourself about how you want to be spending your time now, in the present moment.


My first instinct is to go somewhere quiet. I would transport myself to a forest somewhere, in the early hours of the morning, 1921, let’s say. There’d be a lake. And I think there would be no people around. I would want to see the world without human markers of time.


But then, I could stand in a forest anytime I wanted and pretend it is 1921!


Second instinct is to drop myself on a large city’s busiest city street corner at the turn of the century. Can I make it a world tour of busiest street corners? 


Third instinct is – no, I actually don’t want to visit distant ancestors in rural Italy.

I just want to find some one I could talk to, really.  I think I want the peace of knowing we are all existing/we have all existed together on this earth.  I don’t want to feel alone in time.

A Q&A with Debashis Sinha

Debashis Sinha has been crucial to the development of the sonic world of Century Song. Working with creators Ross, Neema and Kate, Debashis (along with pianist Gregory Oh) creates a live improvised soundscape onstage every night. We're so lucky to have Deb's unique electroacoustic sound as a part of Century Song's journey through the past century of art, history and emotion.

Debashis Sinha

Get to know Deb through this Q&A:

Q: What moment in the show always delights you or takes your breath away?

A:The very last note and move that Neema does of the Aperghis-the moment before Gregory and I launch into the response. So lovely and  powerful, and a testament to Neema’s incredible strength and artistry.

Q: What moment from the past Century do you wish you’d been a witness to?

A:I wish I was in Berlin the night the wall fell.

Deb hard at work during an early workshop

Q: Music is at the heart of Century Song.Do you listen to music to get ready before the show? 

A:Absolutely not. I like to keep my mind clear.

Q: This show’s been in development for 5 years. Have you ever done anything else that took five years?

A: Other than be a dad, no.

Q: Can you tell us about a surprising or memorable moment during the creation of Century Song?

A: The first time I saw Neema run through what she and Kate had been working on - I was completely flabbergasted at how amazing she was! And so thankful to have been asked to be a part of it. And completely unsure of how anything I could do could make it better.

Check out Deb's incredible work when Century Song opens at The Theatre Centre this January, curated and presented by Volcano Theatre as a part of Progress. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets.

Use the code EARLY18 before December 25 to get $18 tickets. 

To learn more about Deb's music you can visit his website or check out his Bandcamp profile.