June 18, 2019

A Conversation with Kate Keenan

I met Kate Keenan about two years ago when our children were enrolled in the same swimming class and she made an immediate impression on me as she spent the class entertaining her other child with hand-clapping games—”See See My Playmate” was a favourite. We finally started talking, which was great because I had decided I wanted to be her friend, and then I ended up giving her a copy of my book after a conversation about books and reading, and then the next week she brought me her CD (“I’m in a band,” said this super-cool mom—who, it turned out, had an intergalactic alter-ego—like this was no big thang).

So what I’m basically saying is that I’ve been a huge Kate Keenan fan since “See See My Playmate,” and since then I’ve enjoyed watching her as part of the Space Chums (including in their show at the Toronto Fringe Festival last year).

Her play, The Really Real Adventures of Scott Free and Will Do (which she co-wrote with Lesley Halferty)is playing at Solar Stage at Wychwood Barns until the end of June. We saw it on June 9, and loved it—and it made me realize that there was lots about her career in theatre, writing and motherhood that I wanted to ask her.

*****

Kerry: Can you tell me the story of The Really Real Adventures of Scott Free and Will Do—when did you (co) write it and where was it performed? 

Kate: To tell you the story, I could start all the way back in high school at Etobicoke School of the Arts where I was lucky enough to be cast in “Les Goons” a Commedia dell’arte troupe run by our teacher John Glossop in the Lagoon Theatre on Centre Island. Best summer job ever. When Mr. Glossop stopped running “Les Goons” I was in grade 10 and some friends and I started our own children’s theatre company, “Island Treasures” in the same theatre. It was like a dream clubhouse/lemonade stand! And a real crash course in running a business…

“It was like a dream clubhouse/lemonade stand! And a real crash course in running a business…“

Anyway, after theatre school, I quickly got sick of having to wait to be cast in other people’s shows.  So, knowing the theatre on the island was sitting empty, I started a company, “Shrimp Magnet Theatre Co.”  with a bunch of friends from George Brown. We couldn’t afford the rights to any published plays, so we wrote our own—and I quickly became more passionate about writing than acting, which is saying quite a lot…

 We would do the shows 6 days a week, 4 times a day (6 times a day at the beginning, until we came to our senses). We’d have rotating casts, but I usually worked about 5 days a week (along with running the operation with my best friend and co-author Lesley Halferty). You know that old thing where if you caught your kid smoking a cigarette, you locked them in the closet with a carton and wouldn’t let them out till they smoked them all? Okay, I guess that was actually a 1950’s thing and no one I ever knew was actually subjected to that but we all heard the stories… Anyway, it felt like that doing those shows. If a line was clunky, or a bit wasn’t working, you’d have to do it over and over again, watching audiences lose attention in the same spot, show after show. At the end of the summer, we were gasping to re-write!

“If a line was clunky, or a bit wasn’t working, you’d have to do it over and over again, watching audiences lose attention in the same spot, show after show.“

And we did. We usually did shows at least two years in a row—and I think it made us really, really good at knowing what worked and what didn’t and how to be unsentimental about stuff. 

Oh dear, I’ve just noticed that didn’t really answer your question! So! Down to the nitty gritty! We created Scott Free and Will Do the summer of 2003, I think! I was 26. (and now I’m 42. WTF?!?) We performed it on Centre Island that year, then we did Toronto Fringe. Then Canmore Kid’s Festival, then Winnipeg Fringe. (And in between we cobbled together a tour in my parents’ minivan—4 actors, one Stage Manager, an entire set and all our luggage for over a month! We traveled to Sault Ste. Marie (where we stayed with my friend Trish’s family and partied under the Royal Order of the Moose),  Atikoken, where we stayed in an old elementary school and played an epic game of hide and go seek all night, then in Geraldton, where we billeted with amazing people and a pet turtle, and also Thunder Bay, with lovely Rita and amazing Hoito pancakes.

Some incredibly talented people have been in the cast, including Keith Barker, who now is A.D. of Native Earth and Rebecca Benson, a prof at Carleton University. In particular, we can never forget C.J. Schneider,  George Brown Theatre colleague who was a natural clown and a force of nature and comedy. A bunch of nonsensical/brilliant lines in the show are his (mostly and luckily because we could not control him) including “Boingy booing chop chop” and “its crazier than eating a dill pickle popsicle on a Wednesday that’s also a Tuesday!” C.J. died way too young of cancer in 2010. We  miss him so much it hurts. Also the brilliant Matt Olmstead and Mark Purvis.

Kerry: What was it to bring the show to life again? What surprised you about this experience? 

Kate: We brought the show to life at Solar Stage twice before when they lived in North York. This time around we had added two new actors (the moms). There were many layers of mind-blowing weirdness for me. First of all, it’s SUPER weird to revisit a show I worked on in my late twenties, with actors in their late twenties when I am now in my EARLY FORTIES! It was like a strange time warp!

I still felt EXACTLY THE SAME, but to the actors I was an elderly MOTHER OF TWO! I kept having to remind myself that I was not the same! To their credit the actors treated me as a total equal, and I really did feel younger while we were rehearsing. I was even joking more like I did in my twenties—it was really strange! And the second thing that blew my mind were the new jokes we found. I mean, I can’t imagine how many times I’ve done this show and STILL, this time, super obvious jokes would pop out that I guess had been staring us in the face for years! That made it so fabulous to rehearse again—finding new moments that ever-so-slightly improved the play. My mom and I have a joke that we can’t just enjoy a joke, we have to constantly be improving upon it. Turns out this is an obsession, and hopefully a career for me! 

“It’s SUPER weird to revisit a show I worked on in my late twenties, with actors in their late twenties when I am now in my EARLY FORTIES! It was like a trippy time melt!“

We have done the show for so many audiences but I will always be blown away that we always get new, mind-blowing responses from the crowd. It was such a refreshing thing, right out of theatre school, to be performing a play so many times that you had to work to keep your energy up, as opposed to your nerves down. One thing that always kept me alive and engaged was the excitement of what the audience would bring to the show. And they are still bringing brand new things! For (a slightly unsettling but still interesting) example, just recently when the actors asked the audience, “How do you know you’re real?” A child replied, “because we could die.” Not the usual kids theatre fare, but pretty amazing…

Kerry: You were writing for children before you had kids of your own. Has becoming a parent changed the way you relate to children? Are there things you know better now? (Or vice versa?) 

Kate: How has becoming a parent affected how I write for children? Well, I think it’s allowed me to cheat. Honestly, before I had kids, I felt I remembered what it was like to be a kid myself. I feel further away from that now—can I blame the sleepless nights with my babies? I dunno, but I do feel grateful that parenthood has allowed be to experience childhood all over again with a new perspective. Funny, our show has two moms and two kids in it. If anything, I think I now approach the mom characters less as caricatures and more as real humans! The kids have stayed real…

“If anything, I think I now approach the mom characters less as caricatures and more as real humans! The kids have stayed real…“

Kerry: What do you love about writing for children? 

Kate: My love of writing for kids is twofold. Firstly, I’m super insecure, so writing for kids gives me a flimsy excuse not to “take myself too seriously.” It gives me the permission to be free and not judge what I’m writing. But actually that’s bogus, because I believe that writing for kids is as difficult and sacred as writing for adults—my ego just needs a weird cop-out.

Secondly, I love the honesty of kids. I love that when I’m performing for them, I know when they’re bored. There’s no fakery, so the feedback is super accurate and helpful. Being able to trick my ego and being given such robust feedback has helped my writing immensely!

Kerry: What other creative projects are you up to these days?

Kate: Right now I’m writing a bit for children’s television, still with my bestie and co-author of Scott Free & Will Do, Lesley Halferty—shows that have yet to air, but I will keep you posted! I’m also 1/3rd of an outer-space rock band for kids called Space Chums with Ian and Lindsay Goodtimes! This is where I get my acting and singing  itch scratched and my general goofing around with kids itch as well!

And my other passion project is a podcast for kids where I write stories on demand from “story seeds” kids give me. I’ve only just started out, but so far I have a story for my eldest daughter Elwyn, called “The Lights in the Forest” and one for my youngest daughter Lucy called “The Ballad of the Barn Owl” My plan is to record them and eventually publish them.

Go see Scott Free and Will Do at Solar Stage!

June 17, 2019

Gleanings

• Amelia Bedelia turns passive aggression into a kind of art.
• Sharing and generosity are at the core of our values and at the core of my art. Sharing, giving and generosity is a central tenet of my life. It’s tied to love, respect and compassion. It’s tied to justice.
• I expect the process of writing a novel might just involve a lot of thinking you are unworthy.
• The first day of outdoor swimming in Toronto is truly my favourite day of the year. 
• ‘taxi!’, by helen potrebenko
• There’s some science behind the appeal of comfort reads, it turns out. 
• And then I started thinking about community and about belonging.
• So after all the white and drabness of the other season, suddenly we arrive at summer.

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June 14, 2019

Ruby’s Birds, by Mya Thompson and Claudia Dávila

Having recently read and loved Ariel Gordon’s celebration of urban forests, not to mention still coming off a recent trip to New York City, Ruby’s Birds, by Mya Thompson and Canadian illustrator Claudia Dávila (we’re big fans of hers) is high up on our list at the moment. It’s the story of Ruby, a young girl with too much energy—so much so that she’s driving her family batty as they’re cooped up in their apartment. And so when a neighbour offers to take Ruby on an adventure to Central Park, she’s totally game, and brings her usual merrymaking self—which is a bit of a problem. Because they’ve gone birding, for which a person must necessarily be quiet, and be patient. Which does not come easy to Ruby at all, but then her patience is rewarded at the sight of a golden-winged warbler.

“We move carefully. We’re serious. We pay attention. We watch for tiny movements in the leaves. We try and try.”

Ruby’s Birds is published by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, whose mission is advancing the understanding and protection of the natural world. The story is fun, the illustrations interesting and dynamic, and the book concludes with information about city birds, the Cornell Lab’s Celebrate Urban Birds project, a list of 14 different species that can be located in the pages of the book and even in the reader’s own city, plus a list of inspiring tips for nature walks. It’s a great book to inspire readers to get outside and get exploring, and perfect for spring.

June 13, 2019

We Need Each Other: Part Two

No writer is an island, as much as many of them try to fashion themselves as such. But those of us who are paying attention know how everything is connected. (Do read Kimmy Beach on how injections are friendship are essential to the writing life!). Which is why I think that having a bookstore with only four books in it is a thing that really matters.

Okay, hear me out.

Four books, each by writers who live in different parts of the country, published by four different Canadian independent publishers. But these books look good together, and side by side they’re selling a few more copies than they would have on their own. And as a Canadian writer, I benefit from this, even though my own book is not one of the four, not least because as a Canadian writer I am necessarily a Canadian reader, and so everything that promotes good books and reading is to my benefit. But also because getting these great books into the hands of great readers serves to enrich our reading culture, and a rich reading culture serves every single one of us with books to sell, even if it’s not my book they’re selling.

This is also why we’re encouraging readers to seek out Briny Books titles at their local indie bookstores, if they’re lucky enough to have one. Yes, indeed, we’ve got free shipping, but I personally know that a trip to the bookstore is even more exciting than a book in the post (even with the free shipping). Our mail order business is intended to woo the reader who is wedded to Amazon purchases or who has to drive for miles to land at a place that sells books at all, let alone excellent ones. But all readers and writers benefit from a culture in which indie bookstores are thriving, and so we want to help that happen. With bookselling too, as with reading, writing, and everything, it’s way more fun when you’re doing it together. It’s not a contest, or a race—it’s a network.

I want to challenge our notions of scarcity. Or maybe rather to acknowledge that even within a culture of scarcity, a spirit of of generosity is powerful, and that we will always have more when we have it together, because what we have in each other is actually priceless.

June 12, 2019

Echolocation and Meteorites

Echolocation, by Karen Hofmann

As a fan of Karen Hofmann’s novels (I loved After Alice, and What is Going to Happen Next is a title I’ve been recommending widely) I’ve been looking forward to her short story collection, Echolocation, which was published in April—and it did not disappoint. The stories themselves are wide-ranging in tone and style, as well as in their publication history, if Hofmann’s “Acknowledgements” are any indication—the title story was published in Chatelaine in 1998 (and now I am nostalgic for short fiction in women’s magazines, and women’s magazines in general. But I digress). Stories are written in the first person, third person, and even one in first person plural, which I liked a lot—about a group of colleagues retreating to a cottage after a conference, and it’s an incredibly orchestrated melee. “Echolocation” is a story of miscarriage and marriage. In “Virtue, Prudence, Courage,” two misfit newlyweds turn feral on their wilderness honeymoon. In “The Swift Flight of Data Into the Heart,” a woman’s long-buried secret is beginning to rise to the surface. As in What Is Going to Happen Next, this book is impressive for its broad scope and convincingness at all corners—suburban wives and mothers, middle-aged men, a family of immigrants from Bosnia, an ex-nun, an elderly painter who clings to her independence, and former trumpet player from a travelling band of people with dwarfism, although the narrator was taller than they would have liked, but they needed trumpet players, as all bands do.

Meteorites, by Julie Paul

I was also excited to read the latest by Julie Paul, whose last book was winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and made the Globe and Mail’s Top 100. Similar to Echolocation, Meteorites is a grab-bag of various delights, whose stories whose concerns include obnoxious step-children, ghosts, teenage friendship, brotherhood, a young daughter’s self-harming, an organist determined to persist after her arm is amputated, and also murder. The settings seem familiar, but something sinister lies at their edges—sometimes surreally so—which is part of what makes these stories such compelling reading.

June 11, 2019

We Need Each Other

This week in a blog post, Carrie Snyder made a note about her discomfort in receiving, and if her post had been a page in a book, I would have underlined the entire passage and made an annotation in the margin: YES!! But it’s strange for me, because I’m never expecting to feel this way. My instinct is to feel absolutely entitled to everything…until it arrives and then I want to sit under the table and hide. So that the two choices the end up available to me are between not getting what I want and being dissatisfied (and angry and resentful), or getting what I want and feeling tremendously uncomfortable. (“The one great thing about having your book rejected is that at least you don’t have to go through the agony of publishing a book,” is a thing that I’ve said lately.)

Launching Briny Books last week was a million times less stressful than launching a book—and I have so enjoyed learning more about marketing and the opportunity to market something that is less connected to me personally. (I am ridiculously sensitive, although I am working on it always, but the most 2019 emo thing about me is that every time someone unsubscribes from my newsletter, my feelings are hurt.) It’s been fun and exciting and I’ve been so pleased that others seems to find the idea (which is a pretty simple one) as compelling as I do. Getting comments on Facebook (and sales too!) from people who I don’t know and/or who are unconnected with my mom seems significant. My mom commands a vast and powerful social network, to which I have to thank for a sold-out book launch awhile back, but moving beyond the plane of her influence seems next-level to me.

But moving beyond would not be possible if not for my mom, and my friends, whose support of the project was overwhelming and amazing, even if it did make me want to hide under the table. The support of my husband too, who has devoted more labour than anyone else to the project, with web design and photography. To me, this entire experience has underlined the power and possibilities of collaboration and community. I am so grateful to everyone I know and love who purchased books and helped spread the work in their own networks. I continue to be overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of people I’ve never met except on Instagram or through my blog, people in whose lives and experiences I’ve found myself become so invested, and who are incredible champions of the stuff I get up to. To my friends, who never show it if they’re tired of showing up for me, and all week I kept thinking, “What did I ever do to deserve all this goodness?” That there are people out there like you.

My favourite thing about Briny Books is that partnership is at the heart of it, though that’s primarily because it’s always my objective to make things as simple as possible. Sure, it’s great to support to independent bookstores in principle, but in practice too, there’s a lot going for the idea. They know how to sell books for one, as in bring in copies from the distributor and then ring the order through the till. Possibly my greatest strength as an entrepreneur is an openness to outsourcing—which comes of my greatest weakness as an entrepreneur, which is having no money. But what a thing, to put our strengths and passions together. I know that having Blue Heron as a partner in Briny Books has done good things for our reputation—and I know too that Blue Heron’s willingness to pursue a project like Briny Books is how they got their reputation in the first place, for ever pursuing fresh and creative ways to connect books with readers. And bringing books to readers is a kind of partnership too. In a community of readers, books connect us all.

Maybe what I’m trying to get at here is how surprised I am at the revelation that my reliance upon other people is actually a kind of strength, instead of its opposite.

(Even though once upon a time, I thought this reliance was something I must necessarily defy, possibly because I spent my formative years reading too many books by men, and that was when I was 23 and ran away to Europe with a backpack in order to discover myself—but the only thing I would discover was abject loneliness and a propensity for crying in phone booths.)

But perhaps reframing receiving in these terms—of strength and community—is what’s necessary to help me work through the discomfort of receiving. What if it’s receiving care and support from others that makes us our truest selves? As Briellen Hopper writes in her essay, “Lean On,” “I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others’ love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers.”

My friend Ann Douglas has been writing a lot about community lately and inspiring so much of my own thinking, and I appreciate what she said in this piece about thinking of community as a resource instead of a burden. “The more you turn to other people for support, the more you give them the opportunity to support you, which feels really good to the other person,” she explains. Which is true: I remember one day a few months back, Ann reached out to me for something, and I felt so buoyed by being called upon, by having something to offer.

Similarly, I have a very generous and kind neighbour who is forever bringing us gifts and doing us favours, and the best email I ever received from him was the day he needed to use my printer. When you get to help out your neighbour, you’re also contributing to making a world in which people help their neighbours happen. Bad news though: he did use our printer, but has since approached me with a problem that he’s having, which is that he has too much beer, but wasn’t sure if we liked beer, so he’d felt uncomfortable bringing bottles over.

I am beginning to accept that I will never outdo this person when it comes to kindness and generosity…

But maybe it was never a contest anyway?

June 10, 2019

Gleanings

• Jennifer Weiner created the perfect reading nook. No one used it.
• Whatever we do next, as adults of our species, will determine everything.
• Women, can two or more of us get together without mentioning our bodies and diets? It would be a small act of resistance and a kindness to ourselves.
• What does it mean to be “the village” — to not just long for connection with other people but to actually show up and build those kinds of relationships and, along the way, create community for yourself and other people?
• What a gift is this life, the tawdry glamour, the writing, the body that I’ve been given and that has taken me this far.
• As the years tick past those early days, parenting life becomes less visible, doesn’t it? I suppose you are meant to know what you are doing by then?! Imagine that! Because we’re just winging it like way back when.
• So yes, we’re uncomfortable with the notion that genocide can happen within our borders, in our communities, on the long highways of our country, in its rivers where so many young women were thrown…

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June 5, 2019

Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests, by Ariel Gordon

Ariel Gordon’s brand new essay collection Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forest, was just the book I needed last weekend, a weekend we headed into amidst news headlines of rising water and forest fires, which I was finding positively dispiriting. And yes, of course, it is supposed to be dispiriting, but I also just can’t live like that, so certain in my despair. I need to still love the world, and find wonder here, and it’s a kind of compulsion, which is what Treed is all about as it makes a kind of sense of the messiness—of hybrid spaces, our history of colonialism, of contradictions, tension and balance, and the absolute insistence of wild things. The very fact of an urban forest.

“But this is a multi-use space. It is a public space. Which means people bring to the forest what they have: Dogs. Children. Inappropriate nudity.”

Treed is also a book about mushrooms, which if you’ve known Gordon online for any length of time is unsurprising, and about the way that mushrooms became her gateway to Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Forest as she began to explore this space which was overwhelming in its immensity, but noticing mushrooms was about detail. And the book’s third essay is a diary of these explorations as Gordon moves through the seasons of the year and of her life, and it acquaints us with the subject, our intrepid narrator, and the space and trees that come to fascinate her.

There are challenges and complexities: balancing urban trees with development, fighting diseases and pests, that trees have a natural lifespan at all, invasive species, monocultures, balancing the needs of people with the trees they live amongst, and Pokemon Go vs. proper exploring (and her cat), and Gordon shows that these complexities are more complicated than she properly understands, a perfect balance impossible, the tension inherent. The challenge of being a living thing on the planet.

I loved this book, which was also about balancing motherhood and writing, the family and the self, solitude and community, city life and the inexorable fact of nature, abject despair indeed and the wonder that is everywhere, if you care to look—starting with the mushrooms.

June 4, 2019

Briny Books is here!

Yesterday was the launch of Briny Books, a project I’ve been scheming over the last six months, with the help of my web-designer/photographer husband, and the amazing Blue Heron Books who came on board when I sent an email with the subject heading, “So, I have this dream…” The dream, which is probably your dream too if you love books as much as I do, is to own a bookstore—but I have no business acumen, or capital, or experience in bookselling, which is a proper vocation for sure. So how to scale that dream down to something achievable, something meaningful that could still make a difference? And Briny Books is the answer, a boutique online bookstore—whose purchase links direct to Blue Heron’s site so they can take care of that end of things, which is in their wheelhouse—and they’ve even finagled free delivery. But curating an incredible book selection? Why, of course, that IS my wheelhouse, and oh my goodness, is our inaugural lineup ever exceptional. I’m so thrilled by all four books and so proud to recommend them, because I know that readers will respond and appreciate what these amazing authors are up to, authors and books that should be on everybody’s radar. And while I understand that through Briny Books, we don’t (yet!) have access to everybody, we do have the opportunity to bring these books attention they mightn’t have received without the project, and likewise to bring to readers these amazing books that they deserve to be falling in love with. The books will also be featured in-store at Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, and we hope that other booksellers will stock and even display our picks, and this way everybody wins, a richer reading culture, little-by-little, step-by-step.

I’m grateful to everyone who’s as excited as I am.

June 3, 2019

Gleanings

Whew! A bumper crop of good things to read online this week (or “on the line” as my youngest daughter said to me today when she was trying to explain something she’d seen on the internet). Gleanings was on hiatus last week while I was on vacation, which means I’ve got even more than usual to share this time. Thank you, as always, for reading!

•  First, I stumbled upon a Chuck E. Cheese training video from the 1980s when I was procrastinating on my master’s thesis. 
• I was already in love with notebooks and spying before I met Harriet, but she made that okay. 
• How Claudia Kishi Inspired A Generation Of Asian American Writers
• What are children to do when they realize that the adults in their lives are making it up as they go along.
• This year I even considered scaling back the unicorn party as a sort of white flag gesture.
• What my mother likely hadn’t considered until that moment was that my books, and my Anne books in particular, were the constants in my life.
• You want to be building community, so that when you need to access community, community’s there for you.
• This is what it looks like to have a feminist husband.
• What I’ve learned from being vulnerable is we are not alone, we are all different, and we all desire to be accepted and accept ourselves fully in this journey we call life.
• it’s the swim cap, it gives me a facelift
• What are your indelible words?
• My goal is to make this summer all about having fun in the water. 
• Holy cow. Can you even believe an amazing baker is whipping up ’embroidered’ cakes?
• nanaimo ice cream bars (!!!)
•  I have learned the hard way that this is a lesson that everyone comes to in their own time–if a friend is fretting endlessly about what to wear to a party, “What makes you think everyone is going to be looking at you?” is not an immensely helpful thing to say.
• Over the years we’ve lived here, I’ve grown to love the homing pigeons that live a few doors down. 
• I’d be a faster reader if I read one at a time, I imagine.
• It’s a bit of a shame that the in-between has not really had its time to shine, isn’t it?
• I’m especially glad that I can keep the old and useless and rejected in use a bit longer.
• If any of the eyeballs in your manuscript make sparks or are steely or artless, I would further invite you to try to make that happen and ask someone to tell you exactly what you’re doing with your eyes.
•  Women acting collectively in open and angry defiance can change history…