Havana Theatre

Be in on the joke in AI

Hannah Everett, left, and Drew Carlson co-star in Artisanal Intelligence, at the Havana Theatre Jan. 14-18. (photo from Spec Theatre)

Drew Carlson and Jewish community member Hannah Everett are reprising their roles in Artisanal Intelligence, which again plays at the Havana Theatre, Jan. 14-18.

Written by Jewish community member Ira Cooper, the show had a limited two-show run this past July at the Havana; both of those performances sold out. It also traveled to a few Fringe festivals, garnering positive reviews.

Carlson plays Barry, a hipster customer-service robot who is filled with esoteric knowledge and mad skills. Everett plays Jane, the entrepreneur who created Barry.

“The content will be the same, aside from a few tweaks and tightens,” Cooper told the Independent about how the January production differs from the summer show. “One of the songs, ‘No Off-Switch for Love,’ will be fully orchestrated, as opposed to the passable version of it that I created on GarageBand with digital instrumentation, so that is exciting and new. I am hoping it will fill out the song more, give it its deserved panache, and get people dancing in and out of their seats. It’s a Boney M.-inspired funk track, so I am really happy that it will finally be given the backtrack it has always longed for.”

photo - Ira Cooper’s Artisanal Intelligence is at the Havana Theatre Jan. 14-18 — Ira Cooper *(photo from Spec Theatre)*

The idea for Artisanal Intelligence took a couple of years to develop.

“In 2017, I went to live in China for a year to teach at a Canadian high school abroad,” said Cooper, who teaches the younger grades English and drama at King David High School. “My partner stayed in Canada and so I was there, in a new city, in a massive apartment, concocting, creating and percolating thoughts, ideas, words and scribbles to fill a void. Artisanal Intelligence was my attempt to write an accessible Fringe show…. Hipsterism just has so much great material to rib and, being that I would self-identify as a ‘hipster,’ I needn’t go too far to do my research. And robots. And AI. All are distinct and widely known, relevant, partaken in and discussed topics, so it seemed like an easy fit with my own personal playwriting aspirations this time around.

“I do not remember much about the writing process for the initial drafts. Knowing myself, it was probably over a three- or four-week period. Then drafts. Collaboration is integral to everything I and Spec Theatre do, so, early on in the process, I had people reading the script and giving me notes. Then it was sitting down with the director, Bronwen Marsden, for more edits. Then with the actors. Then with my partner, who is also the artistic designer for Spec, Ruby Arnold. The more feedback the better. The end result is a deeply heart-filled joint-effort, which we are all proud of and which we all had a part in molding, from the very words on the page outwards.”

Cooper said Artisanal Intelligence lampoons and lambasts hipster culture, as opposed to critiquing it.

“The show uses a lot of recognizable hipster motifs, tropes and allusions, but the audience is consistently in on the joke,” he said. “The show is a discussion on identity, self-perseverance, self-reliance and the impending (or not) robot apocalypse, but in a soft and humorous way.

“I think the show actually exemplifies why culture can be important, how it can bind us to something bigger than ourselves. We are constantly looking for the ‘bigger than ourselves’ entities. And so, with the culture references, the clearly identifiable razzing and fun that takes place in the 55 minutes of Artisanal Intelligence, the audience, who get what the show is alluding to, are part of each joke’s equation – that knowledge links culture, the audience and the performers.”

The performances at the Havana in January will be relaxed, said Cooper, which means “the houselights will never fully dim and people are free, if they need or want, to get up, stretch, move, go for a walk, etc. We want theatre to be accessible to everyone and we respect, acknowledge and cherish the diversity of our audiences. Also, if you’re an artist of any kind, Spec Theatre is always looking to collaborate, to make unique, experimental, new things. Reach out!”

For tickets to Artisanal Intelligence, go to spectheatre.com.

Monster brings back Jesus

Ryan Gladstone is co-writer of Jesus Christ: The Lost Years, which opens at Havana Theatre March 13, 8 p.m. (photo from Monster Theatre)

Scholars have pondered the question of the unknown, or missing, years of Jesus. In the Christian Bible, he disappears from the narrative in his teens, only reappearing at age 30. What happened in that time? What was Jesus doing? Even if you haven’t wondered about this before, you should consider checking out the award-winning theatrical romp Jesus Christ: The Lost Years, which offers some unconventional theories that academics and theologians have possibly overlooked.

Written by Ryan Gladstone, Bruce Horak and Katherine Sanders, with an original score by Drew Jurecka, Jesus Christ: The Lost Years was first created in 2006. It toured until 2008, then also had its “lost years,” returning to the Fringe circuit only last summer; this time, with two women playing the male leads. Directed by Gladstone, the irreverent physical comedy opens at the Havana Theatre March 13.

“The script is pretty much the same, so the biggest change is what the two new performers bring to the table,” said Gladstone about how the current iteration of the play differs from the original. “Carly Pokoradi and Alex Gullason really have made the play their own, and that’s been a pleasure to watch. It’s also fun watching two talented and funny women being funny and talented on stage.”

Both actors take on multiple characters. In the play, notes the promotional material, “we see teenaged Jesus, wondering why he doesn’t fit in. Mary and Joseph finally come clean and tell him that Joseph isn’t his real father. Hurt and confused, Jesus heads off on the most epic father quest of all time. Along the way he meets Judas, Mary Magdalene, the Three Wise Men, lepers, Romans, he even has a battle with the spirit of Elvis!”

The idea for Jesus Christ: The Lost Years came up long before it was first produced in 2006.

“Katherine Sanders and I were roommates in Calgary in the late ’90s, and we came up with the idea of doing a play about a teenaged Jesus. But Monster Theatre was just on the cusp of being founded and it wasn’t the right time,” said Gladstone. “I remember calling her in 2005, saying, ‘It’s time.’ So, we started researching, and we got Bruce Horak on board, who we both greatly respected, and got to work. The writing process was pretty smooth for having three writers, though maybe some of us were more forceful with our ideas than others! (I’m talking about me, if it’s not clear.)”

As wild as the play gets, it is based on research, as are all Monster Theatre productions. Part of the company’s mission is to reimagine history or adapt “universal stories to make them relevant for our specific time.”

“I took a couple history classes in university but, funnily enough, my thirst for history came out of doing plays for Monster,” Gladstone told the Independent. “In 2001, we created our longest-running, most successful show, The Canada Show: The Complete History of Canada in One Hour, and the research portion of the project really fired my imagination. I loved the idea of taking amazing events that people have never heard of and exposing them to these great moments in our past, or events that people think they know and showing it from another angle. In 2003, Bruce Horak (and later my brother Jeff) and myself spent about seven months researching and writing the follow-up show, The Big Rock Show: The Complete History of the World. It was really this that gave me my love for history. Having that broad overview of everything has given me context for every other event I learn about.”

Perhaps also “funnily enough,” given his love of history, Gladstone only recently found out about his Jewish heritage. “A couple years ago,” he said, “my brothers and I got one of those DNA tests done for both our parents, and discovered that our dad has about 30% Jewish blood. We have some very close Jewish friends here in Vancouver that took us under their wings and guided us through everything they thought we needed to know.”

Born and raised in Calgary, Gladstone went to theatre school at the University of Calgary. “I had been caught up in the exciting whirlwind that was the Loose Moose Theatre Company, run by improv guru Keith Johnstone, who was also teaching in the theatre department at U of C,” explained Gladstone. “After I graduated, I moved to Toronto, because that’s where all my friends were, and I loved it. That was around the time that I founded Monster Theatre. In 2006, I moved to Vancouver. My (now) wife had come to Toronto from Vancouver and tried it out for a few years and we decided we would give Vancouver a shot for year or two. Well, that’s been 13 years now.”

Gladstone followed up his bachelor of fine arts in acting from U of C with a master of fine arts in directing from the University of British Columbia. He has written or co-written, produced, directed or acted in every Monster production.

“It’s a tough thing to tally, but I think it’s around 40 original plays, written or co-written,” Gladstone said of his literary output. “I occasionally write for other mediums; I’ve been co-writing a kids’ book for many years, and we have tried adapting our plays for film and web series.”

Gladstone founded Monster Theatre almost 20 years ago. “In 2000,” he said, “I wanted to tour the Fringe Festival circuit. I had some friends with a comedy troupe called the 3 Canadians who were very successful and were touring Australia and beyond every year, and I basically wanted to be like them. So, I filled out an application form for the Edmonton Fringe and, when it came down to ‘Company Name,’ I just wrote down Monster Theatre for the first time.

“The name is based on something Keith Johnstone said one day when I was in university. We were working on a scene from Othello and Keith was discussing Iago and the difference between demons and monsters. He said, ‘Demons are evil and twisted on the inside, but they are usually quite attractive on the outside, while monsters are strange, twisted and bizarre on the outside, but they always have a good heart.’ And I thought, that’s the kind of theatre I want to make! So, we try to create original plays that are odd, unique, unlike what everyone else is doing, but we are always focused on the heart of the play, making sure that it is rooted in something meaningful or profound. We often talk about our style as being at the intersection where high brow and low brow meet.”

Gladstone was still living in Calgary when he started Monster Theatre. “But, when I moved to Toronto, the company, such as it was, moved with me and, when I moved here in 2006, it moved again,” he said. “Since arriving in Vancouver, we have laid down roots and I don’t think there will be another relocation for Monster in the future. With that said, Monster is a very cross-national company – we have a fan base in a number of cities across the country. In fact, for a long time, Vancouverites witnessed fewer productions of ours than Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary or Edmonton.”

Over the years, the societal norm of what is acceptable and offensive in word or deed has changed, but Gladstone said there aren’t really any “red lines” he won’t cross in his writing.

“I mean, in the old days, my writing was way more provocative,” he acknowledged. “We were trying to offend people. We often talked about trying to piss off everyone, then no one gets left out. But, these days, it’s a different atmosphere. I’m not afraid of offending people, but I think there needs to be a worthwhile reason, not just for the shock of it.”

Jesus Christ: The Lost Years is at Havana Theatre March 13-16 and 20-23, 8 p.m. For tickets ($20/$15), visit showpass.com/ticket-buyers.

Inhabiting his father’s world

Bob Bossin (photo by Suzanne Kimpan)

Bob Bossin, a well-known Canadian folk musician, recently released a book about his father, Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, Toronto the Good, the Mob and My Dad. The book is a compilation of true-life stories about the author’s father, David, a legendary figure in the underground gambling scene in Toronto in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, but it’s much more than that. It is also a social commentary on Canadian life off the lawful path in the first half of the 20th century.

Simultaneously with the release of the book, on which it is based, Bossin is touring with his new one-man musical, Songs and Stories of Davy the Punk: The Very Jewish Story of My Father’s Life in the Gambling Business. He brings it to Havana Theatre June 3-7, and recently talked to the JI about both projects.

JI: How and when did you come up with the idea for this book?

BB: My father died when I was young, just 17, but I heard many stories about him. One afternoon in the early 1970s, I stopped for lunch at the United Bakers Restaurant on Spadina Avenue. It had been in Toronto since 1912 and it had a counter man as old as Methuselah. I sat at the counter and started kibitzing with him. I asked him how long he had lived in Toronto.

“Longer than my teeth,” he said in Yiddish. So I asked him if he knew the Bossins.

“Sure,” he said, “I knew the Bossins. I knew Hye, Celia, Sady, Bessie, Davy….”

“Davy was my father,” I told him.

“Sure, I knew Davy. We used to call him Davy the Punk.”

“Davy the Punk? Why Davy the Punk?”

“Because he was a punk kid. He was a gangster.”

After that, I became very interested in my father and, as it turned out, the police had felt the same way. While my father was not a man who wrote things down, the police wrote a lot about him. So I started to haunt the archives and newspaper morgues. I tracked down old bookies, old cops and old judges and, over the years, I pieced together my father’s story.

JI: Did you use your imagination to fill the gaps or when memory was fuzzy?

BB: Of course, the imagination is very much involved, even as you are trying to stay as close to the facts as possible. People live lives, not stories. Turning a life into a story is an imaginative act.

JI: Could you tell us something about the research you did for the book?

BB: Calling this book a memoir was the publisher’s idea. Fair enough: books have to be categorized, and “storybook” wasn’t one of the options. But that is how I think of it. This is the story I might tell you on a summer night, if I really got wound up. I suppose it is a memoir of sorts, but my father died when I was a teen, so my personal memories of him end early. Of necessity, I have reconstructed much of Davy the Punk from what others told me, and from the documents my father had nothing to do with.

I did get some of the story straight from my father, Davy Bossin. Among friends and family, Davy was not secretive about his past, and I liked nothing better than listening in when he told his stories. I only wish that I had asked him more questions, and that I had a better memory than I do. Of course, in the end, our fathers’ lives always remain a mystery, and mine no less, despite my best efforts to snoop.

Over the years, I have learned a lot about what Davy did, but how he did it, I can only guess. For instance, I know that he went to New York around 1950 to tell Frank Costello he was quitting the gambling business. But how did he feel boarding the train? Worried? Confident? Nonchalant?

Or there is Bill Gold’s story of Davy happily kibitzing with the murderous Fischetti brothers in a Cleveland gambling club in 1948. Was Davy really as relaxed as his friend remembered a half-century later, when he was 92? I decided to take Gold’s word and reported the story that way. The book is peppered with choices like that … as I kept after Davy the Punk through all the obstacles and dead-ends inherent in chasing a man with a 50-year headstart.

My mother was another important source… After her and my father, I am, in a way, most indebted to Alex Haley, the author of Roots. Sometime in the late 1970s, Haley called everyone to go out with a tape recorder and tape their family elders’ stories. I thought that was a terrific idea…. I recorded interviews with a dozen aunts, uncles and cousins, filling many a cassette. I always asked them about Davy.

JI: You talked to people, searched in archives and libraries. What else?

BB: The internet. Suddenly every paper ever published by the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail was online and searchable. When I searched 1940, up came Gordon Sinclair’s live coverage of the raid on the Canadian Turf and Sports Bulletin, my father’s business. Overall, the books, articles and theses I read number in the hundreds.

JI: How long did it take to write the book?

BB: It took five or six years. I do lots and lots of re-writing.

JI: How and when did the book get turned into a show?

BB: That was my idea from the get-go. Performing, telling stories on stage, both as songs and prose, that’s what I have done for a living all my life. The show premièred at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto two years ago, as a sort of one-act musical reading. It has come a long way since then. I developed it through a few other preview performances that fall, and then put it aside. I’ve just started performing the full version. So far, it’s been four shows.

JI: How much of the book went into the show?

BB: The show is maybe one-tenth of the length of the book. They each have their own tone. The book goes much deeper into the history of my father’s world, particularly of the gambling business, the mob, the behind-the-scenes workings of the authorities, the antisemitism of the times. But the show has the magic of a live theatrical experience and, of course, it has the music.

JI: You’re the author as well as the performer. Do you change the show depending on public reaction?

BB: So far, yes. There’s nothing like getting it in front of an audience to see how it connects. There is a scene in the show now that wasn’t there until very recently. It was a piece I did at a couple book launches. People reacted to it so strongly I thought maybe it should be in the show. Once I put it in, it suggested other changes. It’s made for a significantly better show, I think. Eventually, I discover the best way to tell the story, and then it stays pretty much as scripted.

For a review of Bob Bossin’s Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, Toronto the Good, the Mob and My Dad, see page “A family underworld” by Robert Matas in this week’s issue. For more on the one-man show, visit the website davythepunk.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.