The Toronto-based Quote Unquote collective, formed by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, premiered their first show Mouthpiece in 2015. The story about a writer wrestling with her conscience as she faces the prospect of giving a eulogy at her motherās funeral, the piece fused a female interest plotline with a Beckettian fascination for speech ā American actress Jodie Foster was so impressed by it that she took it to LA, and in 2018 Patricia Rozema made it into a film.Ā Ā
In this gallery conversation, Nostbakken and Sadava reflect on their respective journeys, their creative process and their enduring interests in voice, activism and music. Through working with numerous artforms, methods and collaborators, they trace their path to a theatre that is constantly evolving and becoming ever more political.
Learning by Ear, Painting by Voice
[00:00:19] INTRO
In 2015, the Toronto-based Quote Unquote collective, formed by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, premiered their first show Mouthpiece. This was a story about a writer named Cassandra, wrestling with her conscience as she faces the prospect of giving a eulogy at her motherās funeral. In some ways Mouthpiece could be described as a monologue ā only it featured a protagonist who had lost her voice, and was performed by two women at the same time.Ā Ā
In Nostbakken and Sadavaās rendition, the monologue acquired a new form fusing the precision and muscularity of physical theatre with a Beckettian fascination for speech, Sex and the City–type plotline, and a taste for jazzy a cappella harmonies. In 2017, Jodie Foster was so impressed on seeing this show that she took it to LA, and in 2018 it was made into a feature film by the Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema.Ā
In the conversation that follows, Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava reflect on their respective journeys towards their ongoing collaboration, their creative process and their enduring interests in voice, activism and music.Ā Ā
This conversation took place between Toronto and London by Zoom, on 1st June 2020.Ā
[00:01:50] FORMING THE BASE
DuÅ”ka RadosavljeviÄ: Okay, Amy and Norah, when did you actually meet? When did you start working together?Ā
Norah Sadava: We met in 2011, I believe. Right? And then we started working together in 2012 or ā13 ā ā13, yeah.Ā
DR: Youāre both based whereabouts in Canada?Ā Ā
Amy Nostbakken: Weāre both based in Toronto now, and we both moved here in 2011. But Norah was living in New York City, and I was living in London, and we both were making theatre, respectively, and we both trained abroad. Norah trained in California, at a school called ā we often speak for each other [laughing] because we just ā we know each otherās histories pretty well. But Norah trained in California, at DellāArte, a school called DellāArte, and I trained in Paris at a school called Jacques Lecoq. So we both have very similar Lecoq-based training. And the reason we met is only because of that. Well, no, we met through a mutual friend, but the reason we started working together was because of that niche style of training, which is devised physical theatre.Ā
DR: And going back even further, whereabouts are you both from in Canada?Ā
NS: I grew up in the prairies, in a city called Edmonton, which is in Alberta, and Amy grew up in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. And both of us left to go to school. Amy went to Concordia in Montreal for her first theatre programme, and I went directly into a physical theatre school.Ā
DR: What determined those choices, those early life choices? What were your early, formative influences that attracted you to ever consider a career in theatre and a particular approach to theatre–making that was the physical theatre that you described was your shared interest?Ā
NS: For me, I was extremely ā Amy and I have this in common ā I was extremely shy, like really couldnāt speak to anyone without throwing up out of nerves. My parents were quite concerned about me, because of my lack of social bravado. I was just ā had no guts socially. I was very, very shy. I saw a play when I was about nine or ten ā Peter Pan. And my elder brother was in it, and I sat in the theatre, and watched it, and went: āI want to do that!ā And then asked my mum if I could audition for a play, and she thought I was kidding, because I was so shy she didnāt believe I would follow through. But I did and I started doing theatre when I was a kid, like ten-11. And then I ended up going to an arts high school, and I had a teacher there, who had some background in physical theatre, and ran a club, a physical theatre club at the school. So I got introduced to the concept of starting from the body quite early, and it kind of instinctually clicked with me.Ā
AN: My interest came much later in terms of focusing on physical theatre. I gradually became more interested in performing, from the age of probably 12 or 13. I just liked doing it. Again, I was shy, so it was similar ā it was a similar shock to people seeing me singing on a stage or doing anything that involves public performance. And so I just followed that interest to complete a degree in theatre at a university in Montreal, and I hated this degree. I hated that the disciplines felt extremely siloed and that it was ā you were a performer, or a director, or a writer, or a designer. And at the time, all felt pretty closed to females, except performing and design maybe. Whether that was overtly stated, it just ā thatās how the population was divided. All the girls were interested in being actresses. Not exclusively, but itās how it felt. So, I never considered that I could do more than one thing. And I felt really confined by performing: it felt totally ego–driven, super competitive ā just toxic, you know. Being an actor is just awful. And not having much say, and the kinds of roles that were available, especially in an academic institution ā itās Shakespeare, itās Chekhov, itās Ibsen, itās dead white men, and the roles that they leave for women often are lacklustre, or theyāre just not written by women. So they donāt really know what itās like ā theyāre kind of one–dimensional in their expression of womanhood. This of course is only in hindsight I can register why I hated it so much. So I planned to quit the industry ā not that I had any foothold in it ā to do something else. I applied to one school, which was Lecoq, and I happened to get in. And then, as soon as I attended the first day, on the first hour of the first day, I could tell: āOh, this is for me!ā, because I think one of the first things they say is to leave your ego at the door, and itās not about you at all, itās about the work, which was what was missing for me in traditional, hierarchical structure that is taught in most conservatory institutions in North America and in Europe. So, to classify myself as a creator, which encompasses all of the things, was right for me.Ā
DR: How did you come across Lecoq as a possibility?Ā
AN: By chance, really. I saw a video of Mnouchkine, of ThĆ©Ć¢tre du Soleil and I thought that looked really different, the communal ā I mean, I didnāt know what devising was ā aspect of it. And then a friend just said: āWhy donāt you apply to Lecoq, because you donāt have to audition?ā, because I hated auditioning. I was really bad at it. The air inside a waiting room of an audition ā I hated this competitive, you know, and itās usually not really about ā or maybe not... Now, being on the other side of the table in the audition room, I can see, you know, how terrifying it is. And I wish I knew things then that I know now.Ā
DR: What was the entry procedure? How was it different?Ā
AN: You just wrote a letter of why you were interested, and you got a letter of reference. So I think a lot of it is luck, but also, I was interested in process, I remember saying. But I happened to get in, and I stayed for both years, itās a two–year degree. And then I formed a theatre company in London. I moved to London, and was doing that for several years, and thenāĀ
DR: What was the company called again? I think Iāve read about it.Ā Ā
AN: Theatre Ad InfinitumĀ
DR: Thatās right, Ad Infinitum.Ā
AN: And they still ā they still exist. Iām no longerāĀ
DR: In Bristol? Yeah.Ā
AN: Yeah, they are in Bristol now. We were in London. And Iām no longer an AD there.Ā
DR: And you all met at Lecoq? Was it one of thoseā?Ā
AN: Yes, exactly, which often happens. What always happens is, because both DellāArte and Lecoq are such international mishmashes of humans, everybody forms companies afterwards, and those companies inevitably ā crumble.Ā
DR: I see. And what years were those, that you were in Paris and then came to London?Ā
AN: I moved to London in 2008. So I was in Paris 2006.Ā
DR: And Norah, DellāArte was a Lecoq-style school in California? What took you there? And how?Ā
NS: Similarly to Amy, chance. I met ā there was a company in Edmonton, run by a woman, who had been to DellāArte in the ā90s. They ran a kind of circus theatre company, and she talked to me about it, and I looked it up. I intended on going for just a year to do like a diploma, see what it was like. And I was really young when I went, I was 18. I was a baby. But at the time ā and Iām not really sure what theyāre doing now ā I know they still offer a Masters, but they had just been accredited to become a Masters programme, so a lot of the people who were there were there to do a three–year Masters programme that was associated with the university, and they could actually get a degree. And when I finished the first year, the school asked if I would stay. I think I was just extremely committed, and I was finding in it what I needed, so I ended up staying for the Masters. Again, like Amy, formed a company afterwards. It was called The Hinterlands, which is still going. Itās in Detroit now, started in Milwaukee. And it was largely kind of Grotowski physical training–based, because one of the collaborators had been training with a Grotowski company. And then I ended up, through a series of personal events, leaving, and coming back to Canada. And Amy had ended up coming back to Canada at the same time in pretty similar circumstances. So we had both had this trajectory of finding the thing we wanted to do, starting to do it with people we really wanted to do it with, and then arriving in the city with knowing no one. Not a lot of people here were doing it ā making physical theatre, and much fewer women. So, when we met, it was kind of like: āThank god! Someone else, who not only has the same training, but has the same ambition, and drive, and perspective, and wanted to make work for the same reasons.ā Quite quickly, when we started working together, we knew that it was going to be for the long term, that we were forming the base of something as opposed to just making a play.Ā
[00:13:43] MAKING MOUTHPIECE (2015)
DR: You talk about your training as being physical theatre training ā rightly so, I mean, thatās what a lot of people would associate with both Grotowski and Lecoq ā but the piece we are here to talk about today, comes across as being primarily about voice and vocal expression, rather than physical. Even though, thatās not to say that it doesnāt have that sort of presence of physical theatre training in it. Iām interested in how you then arrived at voice as a shared interest, and the subject of your piece. Was an interest in vocal training there for you all along, or did this vocal aspect come about as a result of considerations of content you had in terms of making Mouthpiece?Ā
AN: Where we have arrived is interested in taking the tenets of physical theatre, and translating that into the voice. And the reason for that has just come organically, because weāre interested in music and vocal expressions of music. One of the first plays that I created with Ad Infinitum was a one–woman play, sung a cappella, called The Big Smoke, which was just me at the mic, very little movement. It was an experiment. For years all I had been doing is jumping around. And at Lecoq, you barely speak in the first year of training. You really barely open your mouth, and people often associated Lecoq training with mime. Itās a mime school. So itās really like the opposite. But the experiment was: Can you create the same things you can create without words, physically? So, character, narrative, story, atmosphere, colour ā by standing still but painting all that with your voice. That was the first time experimenting with that, and then moved to Toronto, and itās not like we planned to make a play, you know, in some academic way. It just comes from our interests, what we know how to do, and what we like to do. And we both like to express ourselves using music and our voices, as well as our bodies. But both of those things, obviously, are not standing and delivering what we call āpaka–paka theatreā. āPaka-paka-pakaā ā two people, profile talking heads theatre. Weāre just not interested in that. Obviously, itās extremely popular, and has been forever, but both physical theatre, and what weāre doing, which is ā I donāt know, weāve never really classified it ā āvoice meets bodyā is an alternative way of expressing all those things, most notably emotion, and what something feels like. When Mouthpiece ended up being ā because it didnāt start there ā a play about what it feels like to be a woman, so much of that is hard to express using text, thatās why so much of the play ended up being expressed with sound, and not necessarily something you classify even as music, but noise and grunts as well as movement, but we use vocal expression and movement as ways to try to capture something thatās not just dialogue, which a lot of more traditional forms of theatre leans heavily on.Ā
DR: So where did it start? What was the development journey of this piece?Ā
AN: I had a very ā as all shows in our experience ā a very vague idea, seed of an idea, which was just a play about female relationships. And I had met Norah, but I didnāt know her. But again, as Norah says there are very few people in town with Lecoq-style training and even fewer women, so I heard about this girl ā this woman, and so I got a $1,000 grant from the Canadian government and [we] decided to get in a room for five days, and just bash around ā thatās it, really. Female relationships ā the light and the dark, and just the multifaceted-ness of females ā mother/daughter, sisters, friends, lovers. And those five days established that we could work really well together. We were on the same wavelength. And the play took three years to make. Over the first year, we were bashing around this concept of female relationships ā this was 2013 ā and we were also bashing our heads against the wall, hitting a wall, a creative wall. And then we decided: āWell, if weāre going to research what it is to be a female relationship, first, maybe we should look at what it is to be female.ā And what better case study than ourselves? So we each ā together and individually ā dug down, and when we both dug down, we both simultaneously hit the same red button, which was the feminist āa-haā awakening. So just as two individual women, we realised: āOh shit! Weāre still under the thumb of the patriarchy, just as much as our mothersā generation.ā Weāve been trying to make this play, which at the time we were denying was a feminist play, because at that time, in our circles in Toronto, in Canada, labelling your play as āfeministā was a dirty word. And we genuinely thought: āNo one will come.āĀ
NS: Very unsexy.Ā
AN: Totally unsexy, not cute, angry! So we realised that we were mahoosive hypocrites. And we decided: āWell, we have to make a play about that, and itās got to just be about one woman, and we need at least two ā two women to play one woman, so thatās what weāll do.ā And we hit that around, I donāt know exactly, probably after about a year. And after we realised that, and realised that the best way to uncover that content was to reveal all the things we were most embarrassed about within ourselves, and the things that were hardest to admit, then the writing came really easy. We just had to confess everything!Ā
[00:20:49 to 00:22:27] āAround Hereā from Mouthpiece (2015)Ā Ā
DR: I want to dwell a little longer on this idea of it having to be one woman, played by two women. There was a bit of a jump in how you arrived at that decision, and what the significance of that was.Ā
NS: A lot of the writing that we were doing at the time was allowing ourselves to write the many voices that are happening simultaneously. So in the same piece of writing, writing about how much you love being catcalled, and the other voice saying how offended you are being catcalled. The things that are happening at the same time with different voices in our heads. It just came out that there were multiple voices in a lot of the text that we were writing that felt congruent with our experience, which is: āIām not one thing, Iām so many. And theyāre all happening at the same time. And theyāre often contradicting each other. Iām not just this way or that way. Iām this way and that way at the same time, and they directly oppose each other.ā And so once we began to articulate that through the writing, we realised that to put out there the truth that I do feel both ways, felt like the main thrust of how we were going to communicate the message, that we canāt just paint a portrait of a woman, whoās just one way, we have to show so many ways she is. And the play could be probably ten women playing the one woman. We decided very purposefully to flip back and forth, and mix up whoās which personality and what has what opinion, because we wanted to make it very clear that it wasnāt the angel and the devil on your shoulder. Itās not the virgin and the whore. Itās the mess of things in between. And they often happen in a less binary way. So coming to the conclusion that it should just be one person, and we should both play her, felt like the clearest way to make that point.Ā
DR: And then what was the process? You mentioned, Amy, it was quite long. Did you say two or three years?Ā Ā
AN: Three.Ā
DR: Three years. And you said after the first year, you actually made this decision around having one character, played by both of you. And you said then that writing the text came easily when you decided to admit to the difficult things. What was the rest of the process? Iām particularly interested in your interest in the sounds and the vocals, and the building of the performance that then followed from that point on.Ā
AN: The way we look at creating, generating content is we donāt trouble ourselves too much with linear narrative to begin with, if it ever ends up linear. But we generate whatever comes up that day, based on whatever happened that morning, perhaps. And that content can be a physical sequence. It could be a song. It could be some text. It could be dialogue. And then, when weāre crafting it into the narrative and weāre making episodes, we look at that episode ā so, letās say itās ābeing catcalledā ā and we think: what is the best tool? We have three tools here ā we have text, we have sound/music, and we have physicality. Which for this exact feeling or happening is the best to communicate this part of the story? And sometimes itāll be a combination of all three, but which is this highlight? Which is the highlighted tool? Mixed metaphor. But the important thing is that we have all this content. So just to be technical: in those first five days, where we had just met and started working, we generated a physical sequence of two women in a bathroom. Because weāre doing a thing about female relationships ā whatās a place that is intimate and vulnerable? ā a bathroom. Letās put two women together, and letās build a sequence thatās very simple ā toothpaste, toothbrush, toilet, wiping. And that sequence is still in the play today. Another way of generating would be: I would go into another room, make a piece of music, or I had made it walking to rehearsal, or recorded it on my phone, something like that. But a lot of the music ā almost all of the music ā is generated not knowing where it would go, based just off the theme of, at that point, female relationships, and then it ended up being āwhat it feels like to be a womanā. And then the musical narrative became clear later. But also, where that music would fit, we didnāt know. So, we had, letās say ten pieces of music. You have, for example, this physical sequence. So, we would try puzzling them, singing them, vocally, a cappella. Mouthpiece is all sung ā thereās no recordings. This physical sequence, we tried it with a folk song over top, we tried it with something else, and eventually it landed on the sort of church-like [number], we call it āFather, Fatherā. The lyrics are like āFather, Fatherā as in referencing God and Jesus, and gospel hymns. For some reason, you know, when youāre building theatre, you click two things apart, and suddenly, itās a whole bigger than the sum of its parts, and you go: āI donāt know why necessarily, at this moment, this is so much bigger, but it really works.ā And then later you can analyse, and say: āWell, because referencing the church, it is a patriarchal institution.ā Or we never do, and somebody else analyses it for us, and we go: āYeah, thatās very smart.ā [Laughter.] But in terms of answering the question of how we generate this, we have pools of content that feel strong to us and then we match them. And we literally take a piece of cardboard, or in our case the back of a pizza box, and then a bunch of stickies, and we stick them, you know, like a visual ā we have a visual reference of pairing things together.Ā
NS: And oftentimes, that doesnāt land, it continues to be shifted until the very last minute. Like, it really is a matter of supernatural science, where youāre working something, youāre working something, youāre working something, and then you switch the order of a scene, or move them around, and suddenly, everything makes sense. And that only comes by trying it, which is another part ā you know, our process is so much based on giving shit a try. Going: āI have no idea what this means, and what itās for, but letās do it and then see what it makes us feel.ā And that ā I mean, thatās devising.Ā
DR: Great! And at what point did the plot decision around the death of the mother come about?Ā Ā
NS: Quite late in the process. Iād say two years into the three years. Am I right, Amy, two years? Something like that. We knew that we needed the character to have an event happen to her that would make her have this awakening, and really look inside. And we also wanted it to be able to resonate into past generations. And so we came up with the idea of the motherās death, really as a vehicle to talk about feminism ā it was not really our intent to be going into grief or death and dying as the theme, but it really was as a kind of trigger point for our character to have a feminist awakening, and look back at previous generations and where we are in history. It ended up through touring the show a lot, being really impactful for people ā death, and dying, and grief, which was not where we started, but just ended up being part of the package.Ā
Ā
[00:31:03] BLURRING THE LINES ā CREATING ACCOUNTABILITY
DR: And then, you brought it to Edinburgh. Which year was it that you came to Edinburgh? Was it 2015?Ā Ā
AN: ā17Ā
DR: ā17. What was interesting about it was ā and this struck me at the time when I watched it but even more so now when Iāve seen the film ā the way in which your rapport with the audience was also quite important to this piece, when you performed it as a theatre piece, in the sense that the audience even gets involved. You have members of the audience come on stage to help you move the furniture, in a very ironic way, but still, it seems like itās not about virtuosic display, itās still about that communication with the audience. Is this something that was foundational in terms of the dramaturgical thinking around the piece and its development, or is it simply something that comes through how you like to perform? This rapport with the audience ā how central is it to the way in which you were making the piece?Ā
AN: We definitely like to fuck around with character and performer ā with those lines ā in all of our work, at some point itās blurred. And we tend to ā without thinking about it ā write not dialogue, but either inner monologue out, or speaking to the audience, or speaking to a different audience that weāre pretending ā like, you know, in Mouthpiece that sheās speaking to the congregation at the church for the funeral. So itās a blur there again. Is it this audience, or is it the fictional one?Ā
NS: I think that for that piece, particularly, but also for most of our work, itās not about creating discomfort, but itās about creating accountability that weāre all in the same room. Itās not about making people nervous that theyāre going to be called up on stage, no one likes to be in that environment, but itās like: āWeāre all here! I want you to know that this is really happening, and that our actions, they do have consequences, and your actions after leaving here have consequences, and you canāt separate yourself from the performance, put a fourth wall up and feel like: āWell, I did a good thing by seeing a play, and Iām going to walk out of hereā.ā Thereās like a kind of piercing of the gap between, like Amy is saying, fiction and reality that I think weāre using quite purposefully as activists as well. That itās not just about seeing a play, itās about: āWhat are we talking about, and what are you going to do about it?āĀ
DR: And how did the film come about? What prompted you to adapt it?Ā
NS: We fell into a lot of luck. A very wonderful and well–regarded film director in Canada, Patricia Rozema, her daughter was an intern at the theatre company, who was producing a remount of the show, and she came to see it ā out of obligation to her child ā and she loved it. She thought that the concept, the duality of the two playing one, was something that she hadnāt seen before. And sheās a really brave film–maker. Some of her work in the ā80s was like extremely on the edge of where cinema was moving, experimental and feminist. We went for coffee with her and she said: āIād like to throw my hat in the ring to direct the film version of this play.ā And Amy and I, neither of us had ever had the intention of doing any screen work ā never really considered it, just always been in theatre. But we were just so excited to give it a try with someone who was so great and so generous. We collaborated with her on the screenwriting ā we adapted the script together ā and we also starred in it. We were just really involved in every creative aspect of it, which was because of Patriciaās attitude, which was: āWeāre making this together.ā Because weād spent so much time making the play, and touring the play, and it was our baby. If someone had tried to come take it away from us, I think we would have hesitated, but because she was bringing stuff to us and saying: āLetās do this togetherā, it was a real pleasure and joy.Ā
[00:35:46] MAKING MOUTHPIECE (2018), THE FILM
DR: Am I right in thinking that when you made the theatre piece, it was just the two of you, you didnāt have any other collaborators? Suddenly, there was a much bigger group of people that you were working with on the film that had other characters, played by other actors. Actually, the mother is present in the film. What was that like for you, seeing your baby, your work, grow, and transform into a different sort of collaboration with others?Ā
AN: It was wild. It was shocking. Also, our theatre company is just the two of us. I mean, we make all the decisions, and we do all the work. We have touring producers, and lots of help in that way, but then, to allow ourselves to release some of the control, was a big thing. Having 40 people making choices about props ā itās just such a mindfuck. But it was just so enjoyable, as Norah was saying, a unique, once–in–a–lifetime, really, situation, where we had a lot of control compared to every other story of what itās like to make a movie weāve ever heard. We had a say ā even though we had zero experience ā and this is just because Patricia is the kind of woman she is. Itās a standalone piece. And the play has not changed because of the film. And so we have these two pieces of art, which exist the way they do, because of the medium. When youāre on a stage, a bare stage, and itās two people playing all the characters, or even just describing a character, and the audience is filling in all the blanks, as opposed to having a real–life performer who is three–dimensional, you canāt get away with having the sort of caricature of an aunt, for example. In the play, we sort of have this larger–than–life voice. Most of the characters in the play, if not all ā yeah, all of the characters in the play, who are not the protagonist, Cassandra, are really the ā itās really just their voices isolated. So, we do a kind of caricature of that personās voice. Once you place that on a real actor ā itās a cartoon if you try to remain at that level, and that affected the narrative. So the role of the mother, we went: āOh damn! Yeah, weāve got to write this womanā, instead of just the āmother through the lens of Cassandraā, which is what you see in the play. So this affected the angle on the subject, if you understand what I mean. The play is much angrier, itās much more of an activist, feminist piece. The film is a bit softer, itās a bit more about the actual mother/daughter relationship that leads to a feminist awakening. On that note, Iām just going to grab my baby! Iāll be back with a baby. Iām just going to feed him.Ā
DR: Thank you for that! Thatās really illuminating, this aspect of how the vocal content of the theatre performance then has to be re–thought, and re–channelled into something else. But did the film offer you opportunities in terms of sound? Did it excite you in any new ways in terms of your creative interest in sound and vocality?Ā Ā
AN: Absolutely! The way we translated the vocal score-ness of the play, the way that translates on screen ā because in the theatre you expect a lot of live performance. You expect the performers to do a lot of the stuff, the singing and the dancing, the soundtrack. In film, you absolutely do not expect the performers, the actors, to be performing the soundtrack. And for us to be able to do that ā the score of the film is our voices, are the voices of the actors, the two actors playing the one woman. So, like, just this idea to us was like ā itās so internal, itās so meta and super interesting and intimate ā that alone, in terms of voice, was really exciting.Ā
NS: One of the main differences between the film and the play ā in the play, Cassandra wakes up with no voice ā she canāt speak ā which is a phenomenon that happens in times of extreme stress, losing oneās voice. But itās a metaphor, obviously, for her feeling voiceless and not knowing who she is, and how to speak, what to say. In the film, we took that out. She doesnāt wake up with no voice. Sheās a speaking person. And that was a decision based on the form ā that sheās a character, if she doesnāt speak for the whole movie, weāre not going to really know her, and we found other ways, I think, to showcase her lack of ability to speak, or understanding of what she wanted to say, her finding her voice. Whereas on stage, the kind of metaphor that flies in theatre, because you can still speak, even though youāre saying: āI have no voice. I woke up this morning, and I have no voice.ā That layer of ability to suspend your disbelief is so powerful ā is why we make theatre, because thereās so many things possible at the same time. And then, when we were writing the film, we just realised very quickly that that kind of metaphor, that kind of suspension of disbelief, can just break a film ā just make people not care or separate them from the character. So that was a really interesting aspect for me about where the rules of metaphor and vocalisation [are] ā because also in the play, we are, like, singing, and screaming in peopleās ears in a small theatre. How that translated into film was just a totally different ā it just changed completely, because it had to.Ā
[00:42:12 to 00:43:15] āImitating Lifeā from the film version of Mouthpiece (2018)Ā Ā
[00:43:16] THE EXPONENTIAL ABILITY OF HARMONY AND DISSONANCE
DR: And what about your other work? You sent me a trailer of another piece youāve made, which is again a collaboration with others. And presumably, there might have been some other work that Iām not aware of as well. Has this interest in voice and sound persisted in other pieces that youāve made, and in what way, have you taken it further?Ā
AN: I think there is a very clear progression. The music and sound takes over more and more with each piece. And the sort of linear, narrative–type story also leaves ā or I guess, we open it up more and more. The piece we made after Mouthpiece is called Now You See Her, and for a time, we were calling it The Six-Woman Rock Opera. We ended up not calling it that, but we liked calling it that just because it seemed to capture ā the rock was our outrage, and opera was the fact that there was a lot of music in it. [It was] about disappearing women in Canada, we had six different narratives, woven together, and yeah, largely musical. This time, we introduced instruments, so we had guitar, electric guitar, piano and drums, double bass, organ, some other things I canāt remember.Ā
DR: When was this made? What was the year?Ā
AN: In 2018, right?Ā
NS: Yeah, premiered in 2018, but again, we started talking, and thinking about it in 2015.Ā
AN: And the show, weāre making now is called Universal Childcare, which is a ten–person choir, essentially, that is entirely musical. Itās totally taken over. Thereās very little spoken text, and there may end up being none. And itās music. Weāre just really interested ā [Amyās baby is making sounds] ooh, singing! ā we are just really interested in the power of music, and how it can communicate, as I said before, so much more than words.Ā
NS: Singing baby.Ā
AN: The singing baby.Ā
NS: With Amyās previous show, The Big Smoke, it was one voice. With Mouthpiece, we had two voices, and weāre excited about the capabilities of multiple voices, and ā like we were talking about earlier ā doing the same thing physical theatre does with painting, colouring atmosphere and character with the voice. Just the kind of exponential ability with harmony and dissonance in larger numbers is really exciting to us. Weāve tended to grow, which becomes less manageable production–wise, but more exciting musically and aurally.Ā
DR: And does it feel that the work is becoming more Canadian? You mentioned that the rock opera was dealing with Canadian issues, a specific problem. And I donāt know what the content, the subject matter of the Universal Childcare is, but to what extent do you feel like youāre becoming more embedded in your local landscape?Ā Ā
NS: I think, as humans and activists, weāve become really interested in tackling issues where we are and that really need to be handled, and that we can point out, or shed light on, and ask for change in localised ways that resonate on a universal level, because anything thatās happening here is happening all over the place. You know, like Now You See Her was dealing with the many ways women are erased: when they reach a certain age, becoming invisible; racial politics rendering them invisible. In Canada, we have a huge crisis of Indigenous women actually disappearing, being murdered, and the police not looking into it. Itās a huge, huge problem, and the government for a long, long, long time wouldnāt even acknowledge it, which they say itās starting to happen, but no action has been taken. So that specifically is Canadian, but that is happening everywhere. I donāt know, I think that maybe weāre becoming more motivated by activism.Ā
AN: [In] Universal Childcare, weāre also comparing four countries ā Canada, the US, Japan, and Denmark, in order to shed light on childcare, because weāre screaming for federally–subsidised childcare in Canada, because we are Canadians, but it should be. Weāre comparing four wealthy nations who have the means to do so, and how weāve been screaming about this for a long time, and how close weāve come ā certain countries ā and we keep crawling forward and then taking steps back. In this case, the text is translated into six languages. I sort of feel weāre actually becoming less Canadian. Mouthpiece was very autobiographical, as close as an autobiographical piece I think we will ever make ā itās just so our dreams and fears and thoughts, wrapped in fiction, but just pulled from our guts. And then, I think the two shows weāve developed, and are developing since then, are opened up to include other voices.Ā
[00:49:23] MUSICAL INFLUENCES
DR: In terms of the sort of musical content, can you characterise what kind of musical influence is present in those shows?Ā
AN: Well, Mouthpiece, the musical narrative ended up being a sort of abridged history of the female voice. So, we have gospel–type hymn, we have Andrews Sisters ā the harmonies of the Andrews Sisters, Billie Holiday, Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, BeyoncĆ©, Britney Spears ā Iām missing a few in there.Ā Ā
NS: Gregorian or Georgian female choir.Ā
AN: Opera. In Mouthpiece, we sort of take you through in order. Not that everyone would notice, or anyone. Very few, I think, have at least commented that they ā definitely a lot of them you can hear. Certainly, theyāre so disparate, like, the Andrews Sisters versus Billie Holiday versus BeyoncĆ©. But the fact that thatās what weāre doing strengthened the piece but was perhaps not overtly acknowledged. And then Now You See Her ā oh, I havenāt thought about the music of that in some time ā each character had their own music associated with them, and then, an overarching, largely a cappella, vocal score. Universal Childcare is almost entirely a cappella, and with so many voices. Itās like a field day. Itās just so delightful to compose for so many voices. The genre is again kind of all over the place, but with an underlying theme being a certain genre of modern/contemporary, weird ā I donāt know how to label it, but not too closely tied to any genre, a lot of it is just mishmash. We havenāt finished the show, so havenāt really thought about how to articulate it yet. But there are ā how many compositions? Thereās a lot.Ā
NS: Thereās like 30 or something.Ā Ā
AN: Thereās a lot. But some of them are very short. Some of them are like clearly based on a style, but most of them ā we have jazz andāĀ
NS: But I would say that the way that Amy composes is really instinctual. Like, not tied to music theory. She always works with her own voice, layering her own voice.Ā
AN: Norah and I are not musical ā have no training, musically.Ā
NS: But to me, when I think about genre, itās like āAmyā! Because whatever the influences musically that she and I have taken in our lives ā that are like spewed out in different ways ā there is a kind of uniqueness to the way that she processes and produces music ā a cappella music, particularly ā that all comes out sounding related, even if itās very different stylistically. So, I think itās like modern/contemporary ā I associate some very different things with. But thereās a kind of a lack of formal structure that I think is right for categorising this.Ā
[00:52:55 to 00:56:35] āFall Danceā from Now You See Her (2018)Ā
AN: There is an interesting observation I had when doing a piece for Now You See Her, which was ā I wanted a techno number. I wanted a big techno dance number. And I struggled a bit to find it ā and using a drum machine and vocoder ā and then I found something that I was pretty happy with. And I gave it to our sound designer to listen to, and he came back the next day, and he was like: āOh, itās so great. I added this. I did some stuff to it, to make it sound more of the genre.ā And what he showed me was like amazing, because it sounded a lot like techno. And I felt really bad, because I was like: āThe thing is, techno is a very male–dominated music genre ā first of all ā a lot of like dudes in their basements. And what youāve done sounds a lot like that, and sounds like fucking great, put it on the radio. But I donāt ā I donāt want that.ā And that was kind of the approach for the entire process of Mouthpiece as well. We didnāt show it to anybody. We did not want a manās hands on it. For that show specifically, just because it was trying to capture exactly what it felt like inside of us to feel like a woman. We didnāt want any influence ā even if it would make it like better, or closer to what people like, or have seen or heard before. We specifically donāt want that. So musically, yes, even though there is like a ātechno numberā, itās our version, being untrained, and not really knowing what weāre doing. Similar to when we were adapting the Mouthpiece film script, and Norah and I kept saying: āBut we donāt know how to write movies.ā Weād be saying like: āHow about we do this?ā or āI donāt know if you can do this.ā And Patricia ā the gift she gave us was saying: āYour inexperience is your asset, because youāre just coming up with shit, because you donāt know how to make a movieā, and I think thatās a great provocation. And I think thatās how we approach certainly music, or certainly I do. Itās taken me a long time to admit that Iām a musician, or a composer, and I still find it hard.Ā
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[00:57:16 TRUSTING YOUR INSTINCTS AS COMPOSITIONAL PRACTICE
DR: How do you compose when you are not initiated in those processes? What does composition look like in your practice?Ā
AN: Itās me in a closet with GarageBand.Ā
DR: Okay.Ā
AN: Me in a closet with MultiTracks, and without thinking too much.Ā
DR: Okay.Ā Ā
AN: Me with a microphone and some way of recording that. Sometimes, itās just my phone, because everything weāre making is more than one voice. I use any kind of software that you can ā you know, if this were 30 years ago, I would be using an eight-track recorder. Like, itās any kind of ā it can be analogue ā any kind of way of layering of my voice. And even thatās how I approach instrumentation. I will first do it vocally like āboom, ba, boom, boom, baā, and then, if I want it to become real drums, Iād use that as a reference. I started using a drum machine to replace that. But my instrument is my voice, first and foremost, and I feel very comfortable, extremely comfortable with that. And I love doing it ā I love composing in that way. I find it very hard to compose when someone else is giving me the direction. Itās very hard, or if I know I have to deliver something very specific that isnāt ā essentially, what Iām doing is devising with myself, because devising is all improvisation, right? You improvise, and then you build on that, refine and improvise. And so the way that I compose is: donāt think too hard, lay something down, even if you kind of like it, lay something on top of it. And almost always the first improvisation I like best. For the soundtrack of the film Mouthpiece, almost all of those pieces ā I made a bunch of stuff and sent it to Patricia. Half of them were done on the first day. And I had weeks to compose, which I donāt know what that means, but I find it really interesting. I think itās because the more you think about it, the less true it is to what it is youāre feeling, or wanting to say. And then you start overthinking it, and it becomes a bit fake, or trying to sound like something else, or yourself previously. But yes, as Norah says, itās all very instinctual. And we teach workshops, Norah and I ā āPhysical theatre meets voiceā is what we call them. So, itās all like three days of experimenting, really. And one of the things we often say, since theyāre almost always only women ā because theyāre mostly female–identifying participants, we tell them to trust their instinct. Itās like such an important thing to remember, because often we donāt, because we donāt feel like experts, because weāre untrained, because itās a male–dominated industry ā film, theatre, music ā all of them. I donāt know whatās female–dominated industry in entertainment.Ā
NS: Childcare.Ā
AN: Childcare, there you go. But it just took Norah and I such a long time to believe ā I mean it sounds cheesy maybe ā to believe in ourselves, believe in our ideas, and believe in our instincts. So, if I had been younger, and I gave my techno song to the sound designer, I may have been like: āOh yeah, that sounds much more legit. Letās go with that oneā, instead of: āThat sounds like closer to what everything else sounds like. Why donāt we go with a thing that doesnāt really sound that much like techno song, but itās something else? Itās techno through a woman.āĀ
NS: The other thing that affects our music processes is that we both learn by ear. And we normalised it very quickly, because itās how we both work ā is just hearing it, and reproducing, and there is no piano, there is no relative key. Like, you saw Mouthpiece: every night, thereās a bunch of songs that we have to start simultaneously in harmony, and itās relative to what ā I mean, thereās a key that we think it should be in, but because itās a cappella, we find each other, and thatās where it is. So, that kind of ear, and that kind of ability to find notes out of nowhere, andāĀ
AN: At the same time.Ā
NS: And do it at the same time, it became really kind of normalised to us as the process through which music is made and learned in our work. And then when we brought other people in, we very quickly realised thatās a big ask, and a lot of people have been trained with a piano, and with perfect pitch, and with technicality, sheet music. So again, insisting: āNo, weāre not going to learn with a piano, weāre going to learn the way that we make workā was a process for us to defend it, to like stand up for this as a legitimate way of learning music ā which, similarly to composing, itās hard to defend because the whole world has done it a different way. And itās also hard as a person ā as a singer, itās hard, but to us it felt really worthwhile to insist on.Ā Ā
DR: Great! Thank you so much!Ā
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Transcription by Kalina PetrovaĀ
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Clips Summary
[00:20:49 to 00:22:27] āAround Hereā from Mouthpiece (2015)Ā Ā
[00:42:12 to 00:43:15] āImitating Lifeā from the film version of Mouthpiece (2018)Ā Ā
[00:52:55 to 00:56:35] āFall Danceā from Now You See Her (2018)Ā