PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic director of Toronto’s why not theatre.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Miriam discuss:

• What was the process of creating Prince Hamlet and bringing it to Vancouver?

• What does it mean to create work with and for those hard of hearing?

• How do you take a huge show that isn’t built to tour on tour?

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• What was it like to collaborate with David Suzuki?

• How do you work with performers who don’t have professional experience?

• How did why not theatre’s artistic approach evolve, and how did your own artistic evolution fit into that?

• How do you incorporate stumbling into live art?

• What have you brought to why not theatre that has informed its direction?

About Miriam Fernandes

Miriam is a Toronto-based artist who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre-maker around the world. Acting credits include Jungle Book (WYRD/Kidoons), Animal Farm (Soulpepper Theatre), Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre), Dinner with the Gods (Wolf and Wallflower, Sydney AU), The Snow Queen and A Sunday Affair (Theatre New Brunswick), The Living (Summerworks Performance Festival), and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre). She has trained with the SITI Company, and is a graduate of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Directing and creation credits include Nesen, (MiniMidiMaxi Festival, Norway) The First Time I Saw the Sea (YVA Company, Norway). She is currently in development for a few new pieces that she is co-creating including an adaptation of the Mahabharata, Three Pigs, and a new play called Partition. Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize.

About why not theatre

When a well-respected global performer couldn’t get an audition in Toronto, we knew it was time for a change.

Ravi Jain moved back to Toronto after building a career in theatre in New York and London. After years of growth and creativity, his ambitions came to a standstill when traditional companies wouldn’t welcome his voice. When adversity pushed, Ravi pushed back and launched Why Not.

Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Ravi was later joined by Owais Lightwala and Kelly Read, in a unique tri-leadership team that was key to Why Not’s success. Today, this leadership structure is being further expanded into a more collaborative model, with Ravi, Karen Tisch, and Miriam Fernandes at the helm.

Together, we are forcing doors open, inventing, encouraging and building a creative community, welcoming stories that look and feel like Toronto, and sharing it all with the world.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (Toronto), on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:23

Today's episode features Miriam Fernandez of Why Not Theatre and is anchored around the 2019 Push Festival. Miriam is a Toronto -based artist and Why Not Theatre co -director who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre maker around the world.

Gabrielle Martin 00:39

She has trained with the Citi Company and is a graduate of École Automacional de Tiâtre Jacques Le Coque in Paris. Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalfe Performing Arts Prize.

Gabrielle Martin 00:55

Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Its mission is to make things better through art, to reinvent how stories are told, to inspire new ways of thinking about creativity and civic engagement.

Gabrielle Martin 01:12

Here's my conversation with Miriam. And we are in Tkaranto, which is the traditional home of many First Nations, including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Wendat, the Chippewa, and the Haudenosaunee.

Gabrielle Martin 01:30

And it is currently also the home of nations, including the Inuit and the Métis. And we are also in the backyard, Miriam's backyard. Yeah, and your new backyard, because you just moved here a couple weeks ago.

Gabrielle Martin 01:43

And so today we're gonna be focusing on Prince Hamlet, which was one of the Why Not Theatre works that has been presented at PUSH. So this was a 2019 PUSH presentation, but Why Not Theatre has also been presented at PUSH in 2014 with a brim full of asha, and in 2020 with what we won't, what you won't do for love.

Gabrielle Martin 02:04

But let's just jump right in. I would love to know about Prince Hamlet, about, if you could tell us a bit about this project, and then maybe how, what the process was for bringing that work to Vancouver.

Gabrielle Martin 02:18

Yeah.

Miriam Fernandes 02:19

So, Prince Hamlet is a show that we built actually in 2017 for the first time. It premiered at the theatre centre, where you were earlier today, and it was a completely deaf and hearing, fully accessible production.

Miriam Fernandes 02:34

So it's Hamlet basically remixed, and it centers a deaf performer, Don Janne Burley, at the centre of the show. Don plays Horatio, who's Hamlet's best friend, who's really the only person left living at the end of the play.

Miriam Fernandes 02:49

And so Hamlet, if you know the play, in his dying breath, he says, Horatio, tell the world my story. And so our production begins at the very end, with Horatio recounting the story through his memory.

Miriam Fernandes 03:02

And so, it was the first time that we at Ynot had ever worked with a deaf performer, and Don was really a ferocious champion around, Don is a third generation deaf person and an artist, and was really ferocious about creating a production that was completely intersectional, so that it wasn't about hearing people, including a deaf person, in the show.

Miriam Fernandes 03:26

It was actually really truly for both audiences. And so the entire show is bilingual, the whole show is both being signed by Don all the time. So she signs for like three and a half hours, as she's narrating, it's pretty remarkable.

Miriam Fernandes 03:40

And also the hearing act, the rest of the cast is hearing. And so the scenes kind of, it's kind of like two plays in parallel, that are intersecting throughout. So we... Super ambitious.

Gabrielle Martin 03:52

It was super ambitious. And that's why it's so memorable, too. It's an iconic piece of pushes that I've heard so much about.

Miriam Fernandes 03:59

You know, and it's funny, like most why not shows, like we don't know what we're making when we're making it. And so when we made it in 2017, we had no, it wasn't really built to tour, but it was clear.

Miriam Fernandes 04:10

Like it, it was so exciting that the audiences that came to see the show were truly mixed. It was like deaf and hearing audiences together. Most deaf audiences have never experienced Hamlet before because it's not, it's not accessible.

Miriam Fernandes 04:25

Why would you go to the theater if you can't, experience your language? And so John's translation of Hamlet was also like super beautiful and poetic. She is like a real master with, with language. And so she translated Shakespeare basically to a heightened poetic ASL.

Miriam Fernandes 04:44

And so, for deaf audiences, they were experiencing their language, but like in a really beautiful heightened way for the first time on stage like that in Hamlet. Audiences, so many people mentioned that it was like the first time that they experienced Hamlet like that, even though they'd seen the show a million times, but the visual component was like, it just brought a whole new dimension.

Gabrielle Martin 05:06

And I remember that I wasn't there, but I've heard so much that she also gave the keynote speech of the industry series because, or address of the industry series. And I think that choice, you know, reflecting on it is probably because of just how progressive and innovative and original this adaptation was.

Miriam Fernandes 05:29

Yeah, I mean Dawn, so Dawn is a Canadian artist who lives in Finland right now. She kind of lives between Canada and Finland because Finland has so much, it's a way better place to be deaf because you actually have access to interpreters and, um, work and there's national deaf theaters in Finland and Norway and Sweden.

Miriam Fernandes 05:49

And so Dawn has actually been a real champion for bringing a lot of that work back to Canada and we've been supporting her in creating her own company over the last few years, which people should check out, 1S1 Theater.

Miriam Fernandes 06:00

Um, she has a new show coming up this fall, which you can see on the website. Um, but it really, it all started out of Hamlet. So in 2017, we created Hamlet without any real idea that we were going to tour it.

Miriam Fernandes 06:11

And there was such a, an interest in the production and clearly like all of this conversation around like equity, which had been bubbling for years, like all of this language around diversity and equity and inclusion, um, it was really kind of like at a breaking point.

Miriam Fernandes 06:28

And so I think the interest in Hamlet and for, and for us, it was also like, it's not, it wasn't about inclusivity. It was actually an innovation in form that it was an artistic innovation. That's that, that's why the show is, is special.

Miriam Fernandes 06:42

And so there was a bunch of interest to tour it and we really wanted to tour it across Canada and push. I think we're one of the first folks that came on board.

Gabrielle Martin 06:50

And you said it wasn't really built to tour is that because it was 17 people on the road or the cast

Miriam Fernandes 06:55

So the cast was nine people, plus we had a stage management team of two or three, plus we have two interpreters who travel with us, and a producer, and then touring a show like Hamlet, which is intersectional, we went like, you can't just tour the show like you tour a regular show, like we have to be in contact with the box office, like the whole experience has to be accessible for deaf folks who never come to the theater otherwise.

Gabrielle Martin 07:19

that mean that you brought more people on the road or that you just had more conversations with the presenters leading up?

Miriam Fernandes 07:26

So the two interpreters we definitely brought on the road with us, but they were really Dawn's interpreters. And then each venue, basically it was a deeper conversation with each presenter. So each venue had front of house interpreters who were there to welcome deaf folks as they came into the theater.

Miriam Fernandes 07:43

There were, the way that we marketed the show was like completely different. Like it was something that hearing people would never think about, but like all of the print language was for a lot of deaf folks, English is not their first language, sign language is their first language.

Miriam Fernandes 07:59

And so having people spread the word through videos, through vlogs, like that's how the word spread. And like there were people, people drove from Saskatoon to Vancouver to see the show because there was so much demand.

Miriam Fernandes 08:11

You don't see that show across Canada. So it was really special to like have so many people show up in Vancouver to see the show.

Gabrielle Martin 08:18

And you had just started with why not at that time and you were the associate artistic director at that time And now you're the co -artistic director And so this was that your first tour then with the company?

Gabrielle Martin 08:30

Yeah, it was actually okay. Yeah, and so what was it like? Coming to push. What was your how did your relationship start with push? What was your perception of the festival when you were there?

Miriam Fernandes 08:40

No, it was really, really awesome. I think, uh, as someone who was born, who's from Toronto, like my point of references are like the Minato and Tiafah, and, um, kind of stuff that happens on the East coast of the States.

Miriam Fernandes 08:53

So, uh, having the chance, it's funny, even in Canada, like we were talking today about how East and West Toronto don't mix, it's often in Canada too, like East coast and West coast don't. It's, it's a big country.

Miriam Fernandes 09:06

Um, but going out to push was so awesome because I got to, uh, like meet so many Vancouver artists, which was really beautiful. We were performing at UBC, which was gorgeous. Like I'd only ever heard of UBC before.

Miriam Fernandes 09:19

Um, and like the audiences, it was clear, like the energy in the city was like all around push and it was such a big deal. I was there for the industry event because Dawn, uh, Dawn was the keynote, which was great.

Miriam Fernandes 09:31

And like, I met so many international presenters and also to like understand geographically, there were so many presenters and like artists from like Asia Pacific or Australia or New Zealand who were coming to Vancouver.

Miriam Fernandes 09:44

And I was like, Oh yeah. Like we in Toronto, we get like Europe kind of Europe and the States kind of coming up to Toronto, but it was so cool to be like, Oh yeah, there's like a whole, the other half of the world actually comes to Vancouver for push.

Miriam Fernandes 09:57

So it was great to meet people and yeah, hear what people are working on. And then.

Gabrielle Martin 10:02

In 2020, you came back, so just the next year, with What You Won't Do For Love. And that project is a collaboration with David Suzuki and David Suzuki's partner, Tara Cullis. And did you meet them while you were there then?

Miriam Fernandes 10:22

It's funny actually, when we came to push for Hamlet, the week before we did Hamlet in Vancouver, we spent a week with David and Tara just roughly researching this idea.

Gabrielle Martin 10:36

At that point, what was the idea for people who don't know?

Miriam Fernandes 10:39

So Ravi had reached out to David actually saying, Ravi had wanted to make a show about the climate and he had worked with a woman named Elena Mitchell on a show called Seasick, which is now Tour of the World.

Miriam Fernandes 10:51

And Ravi was saying, I want to make another piece about the climate and who else would you make that with than David Suzuki in Canada? And so he reached out to David in an email and David, originally the idea was for David to play Galileo in Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo.

Miriam Fernandes 11:06

And David was 84 at the time and he was like, hey, like I've never done a play. I'm super flattered. You asked. I would love to, but I don't think I'm going to memorize all of these lines. And so Ravi was like, okay, maybe that's not the right one.

Miriam Fernandes 11:20

Like let's like, if you're interested, let's try to like, see if we can make something. So over the time, David was also like trying to retire. He was 84, but he's like, he's never going to retire. He kind of retired now.

Miriam Fernandes 11:33

Anyways, he spent a lot of time talking about his wife, Tara and his kids and his grandkids. And so Ravi said, look, what if we, what if we actually try to make this show quality time with your wife and we try to make something with you and Tara?

Miriam Fernandes 11:45

And so everybody who knows David and Tara knows that David's kind of like the front of camera guy and Tara's doing everything in the background. Like she started the foundation. So, uh, we said, like, let's just, let's just spend some time.

Miriam Fernandes 12:00

David said, if you can convince Tara to do this, like it's, she says, yes, we're it. And so Tara, so we spent a week that, uh, before we did Hamlet, we spent a week with them at the DSF in Kitsilano, just kind of like exploring what this play could be.

Miriam Fernandes 12:18

Again, we had no idea what we were going to make. We didn't know what the form was going to be. We just knew it had to do with the two of them. And so we spent a week in a boardroom, listening to their stories and going through a bunch of pictures.

Miriam Fernandes 12:30

And then from there, we kind of, we gathered a bunch of stories, but we're still completely lost, but we're like, okay, it's clear that Tara's story, Tara's the center of this thing, which everybody knows David, but so few people know Tara.

Miriam Fernandes 12:43

And she's like a force of nature. She, she's so amazing, so inspiring. She was the executive, she started the David Suzuki foundation, was the executive director for many, many years. Like, uh, one of my personal heroes, she's amazing.

Miriam Fernandes 12:59

And so we knew that the show was going to be about the two of them, but really highlighting Tara. And so we just needed time to develop and then push was really awesome. So Franco was, uh, taking over push at that time.

Miriam Fernandes 13:12

And Franco said, well, why don't you come back and just, and develop this for a little while. And so, and then you can do some kind of sharing at push, which is really how we as a company develop work.

Miriam Fernandes 13:21

We're kind of we're company of divisors. Revvie and I both come from a Rekok background. And so iteration and reiteration is like just how we work. So we're like, great. We have like this idea of David and Tara and their stories.

Miriam Fernandes 13:34

And we have three weeks in a rehearsal hall, and then we're going to have a show to, we're going to present something.

Gabrielle Martin 13:40

In those three weeks, we're in Vancouver.

Miriam Fernandes 13:41

They were in Vancouver, they were in the Russian hall. And Push, so Push helped us organize the space and everything. And we had an amazing time. And it was actually during those three weeks that we kind of cracked open what the show was going to be.

Miriam Fernandes 13:56

Which was a conversational piece of theatre between David and Tara. And at the time it was Ravi and I sitting with them.

Gabrielle Martin 14:02

Mm -hmm and is that the version that you did?

Miriam Fernandes 14:04

in 2020. That was the version we did in 2020. So it was David and Tara and Ravi and I having a dinner party, like a kind of quote unquote dinner party. And we had a Vancouver design team, Jamie Nesbitt, Meg Rowe.

Miriam Fernandes 14:18

And it was really beautiful. We captured all their stories. I scribed them all because we were like, there's their stories.

Gabrielle Martin 14:27

incredible lifetimes.

Miriam Fernandes 14:28

crazy. Yeah. You could spend months sitting at this table. Yeah. But I started kind of scribing them and then we cut and we were, we shaped the piece like that basically in our like Airbnb for over three weeks.

Miriam Fernandes 14:40

We were up to like two in the morning every day just trying to put it together. But it was, it was so awesome to not only have the space to like develop over three weeks, but have a presentation in a festival like that at the end of that.

Miriam Fernandes 14:54

I feel like um, that was really, it was really important for them. Sure.

Gabrielle Martin 15:00

And it's not, that's a more rare kind of engagement that Push has in terms of hosting artists in residency. You know, it's something that has been done, but just the nature of being a present, an organization focused on presentation, not having our own space, makes it a little bit more complicated to host artists in that way.

Gabrielle Martin 15:19

So yeah, I'm so glad that why not was able to develop this work? And then you ended up doing a version that was a digital version after that, because then the pandemic hit. And I remember just side note experiencing that work, which was a wonderful introduction to Tara and also to this idea of thinking about climate and also contextualizing it in relationships and kind of having that micro to macro relationship where those two conversations happening simultaneously through the work.

Gabrielle Martin 15:52

And I remember also you brought up questions, I believe you brought up questions about kind of the implication of having children in this time. Yeah, and now I have a two year old and you will soon have.

Gabrielle Martin 16:03

Nine months pregnant. Maybe, so questions that maybe we're still reconciling.

Miriam Fernandes 16:10

Well, the thing is funny actually being, because before I got pregnant, I mean, it's, I feel like for, for me, it really was a question. Like, how do you think about bringing more people into this world?

Miriam Fernandes 16:20

Uh, but David and Tara, like they're so, the, the central question of the play really is if we could love the planet, the way that we love the people who are closest to us, would we change? Cause we would do anything for the people that we love.

Miriam Fernandes 16:32

We would do anything to protect them. And so David tells us great story about, uh, his daughter, Savran, who says like she has, who has two kids who now runs the DSF, she's the new executive director.

Miriam Fernandes 16:45

And she says, my kids are my commitment to the future and your understanding of the future and the generations to come is actually just becomes visceral as soon as you have kids. And so that really stuck with me.

Miriam Fernandes 16:58

And like the conversations that we had that we unpacked was, uh, really powerful for me as like, as a person and as an artist, but also just thinking about like, uh, the power of love. Like, actually, if love is as Kara says in the play, like love will make us do impossible things and this climate crisis right now is impossible.

Miriam Fernandes 17:20

So we have to fuel it with something more than just science. It's the statistics are not doing it for us right now. So.

Gabrielle Martin 17:27

And what you won't do for love, obviously you're working with folks who don't have a professional performance practice, and that wasn't a new thing for you. So, A Brimful of Asha was the work that was presented in 2014 at Push.

Gabrielle Martin 17:43

I understand there was a similar theme there. Maybe you could talk to us about kind of the evolution of Why Not Theatre's artistic approach over these years, and how your own artistic approach fits into that mix.

Miriam Fernandes 17:58

So I would say, so Brimful of Asha was the first show that Why Not Brought to Push, like you said, in 2014. It was a show that Ravi Jain, who's my co -artistic director, did with his real -life mother.

Miriam Fernandes 18:10

And they tell the story, the true story of how Ravi's parents tried to arrange his marriage in India and it went very poorly, but it's a very funny story. And Ravi's mom is somebody who's never been on stage before.

Miriam Fernandes 18:21

She spent her whole life raising kids, cooking, like taking care of them. And so, but she is hilarious and completely steals the show. And so when Ravi was making the show, he said, he thought like, if we're going to tell this story about arranged marriage, both of our perspectives actually have to be part of it.

Miriam Fernandes 18:41

And so they crafted the show. It's actually very, it inspired what you want to do for love in a lot of ways in that it's a non -performer who's on stage. So how do we create the container around that person to make them the most comfortable so that they can shine?

Miriam Fernandes 18:56

And so if you ever, anybody who's seen Brimful, it's toured around the world for like 10 years now. It's great. It's like set in Ravi's mom's kitchen and they're sitting at the kitchen table and they're trying to convince the audience who's right, if it should be a love marriage or if it should be a arranged marriage.

Miriam Fernandes 19:13

It's very, very funny. Mrs. Jain is very convincing. And so I would say like that work, that was one of the first like major works that why not created. That work kind of set the stage for a lot of the way that the company has developed and Ravi's work and by extension, the work that we've made together, we just really all it has to do with like who is in the room, the people in the room creating the project will determine what the product is.

Miriam Fernandes 19:41

So in a similar way with Hamlet, because Dawn was there and because Dawn is who she is and who was fighting for the deaf audience to have the exact same amount of access to the language and the story as a hearing audience.

Miriam Fernandes 19:56

We made that show what it was because of Dawn. It would have been a completely different show if it was somebody else. And so in creating What You Want To For Love, which was again, we were looking at a show with non -performers, people who are not used to being on stage, Tara, especially like David's used to being in front of a camera and speaking in the script, but Tara has never done that before.

Miriam Fernandes 20:18

And so we basically wanted to create a container that would showcase her and support her. And so we sit at the table. We don't, we have our scripts with us in front of us and we tell the audience, we kind of make a joke of it at the beginning because David says, I don't want to, I'm not going to memorize lines.

Miriam Fernandes 20:35

And we say, great, we won't memorize any lines. We'll just read off the script. And so those kinds of like little tools, which not only support the performers, but they also kind of like open up a vulnerable relationship with the audience that started to become a language that became really successful in that work.

Miriam Fernandes 20:57

Because then we're all, we don't, we're not actually pretending, we're like, we're all here together. We're, we're. It's honest. It's honest. Like we are who we are. David and Tara are David's 80, 88 years old now.

Miriam Fernandes 21:11

Like you're still doing the show. David's 88. I won't say how old Tara is, but like there will be moments where we stumble and it's okay. It's like, it's where it, it actually is the thing that we do in theater that's live.

Miriam Fernandes 21:25

And so I feel like, yeah, the evolution from Brimful of Asha to another show that we did made called like mother, like daughter, which is similarly inspired by Brimful of Asha to what you want to do for love.

Miriam Fernandes 21:39

There are even bits of it in Mahabharata, which is our newest and largest show where there's a meal in between the two productions. And there's a meal that's basically myself and Sharda Ishwar, who's a community storyteller.

Miriam Fernandes 21:53

And so we sit at a table while everybody's having a meal and we have our scripts with us and we speak about the show. And it's, again, it's crafted, it's scripted. It feels improvisational, but it is very scripted.

Miriam Fernandes 22:05

And it's again, a way to like highlight a non -performer in a setting that they're comfortable in that lets them shine and that where the whole audience can kind of just like relax their shoulders because we're not pretending.

Gabrielle Martin 22:19

All right, and had you been working in this way before joining WhyNot in 2018?

Miriam Fernandes 22:26

No, uh, 20, yeah, 2019, 2019, not, not so, um, not so specifically, I, yeah, no, not so specifically. I think it's a pretty unique way that why not because it is very difficult and time consuming, but it's worthwhile.

Gabrielle Martin 22:44

how did your artistic practice match and meet the company's work and how did you end up with why not in this role and what you what either were kind of underlying interest that you shared or something that you brought that has in informed its direction so

Miriam Fernandes 23:07

I come from a theatre -making background, so I studied at a school in Paris called Le Coq, the name of Jack Le Coq. And so for me, I think the way that Ravi and I make work is very similar in that it's a very iterative process.

Miriam Fernandes 23:27

And so it's tricky because you never, you're just going on instinct. Sometimes we start with the script, sometimes we don't start with the script. A lot of the time it's just, it's impulse. So for what you want to do for love, we're like, we think there are love songs.

Miriam Fernandes 23:44

So we spent a bunch of time with the whole creative team just gathering everybody's favorite love songs and listening to them and getting into the mood. We're like, we think it's about love and the planet.

Miriam Fernandes 23:57

And so we're just kind of following that impulse and provoking with questions.

Gabrielle Martin 24:02

I mean, that's a great answer. I just threw that at you, the sort of genuine curiosity in the moment. But I think you're speaking to it, you know, that just the process of devising and clearly you and Ravi have a similar language and kind of trust in following your intuition.

Gabrielle Martin 24:24

And I would imagine that there's some affinity between your intuitive impulses.

Miriam Fernandes 24:29

Yeah, there's definitely like there there are things where we both completely agree on and then there are other ways where we just pull each other in different directions and sometimes he's right and sometimes I'm right, but it's like it's the trust to know that like, okay, I'm going to let this person lead me and then I'm going to lead and then we're going to find a way together.

Miriam Fernandes 24:46

Mahabharata was kind of like the, the biggest process. We were writing it together for five years. Wow. And so it was really hard, but also really amazing to be in a process for that long and trying to, and both of us trying to follow our impulses together and find our way through this huge maze of stories.

Gabrielle Martin 25:07

Well, it's been so exciting to follow the development of the company. And this project, Mahabharata, has been a national creation fund supported project. So the scale of the work has grown, the international acclaim and distribution, the company's capacity.

Gabrielle Martin 25:28

And I should also mention that I was a 2021 This Gen Fellow. So part of the cultural leadership stream, a mentorship program of why not. And I was paired with Marcus Yousuf. It was an incredible long -term mentorship, which has continued since then.

Gabrielle Martin 25:48

So that's how I first met Miriam and Ravi and was introduced to your work. Thanks so much for chatting with me and providing us with a little bit more context and insight into your relationship with Push and into your practice.

Gabrielle Martin 26:03

Thank you.

Tricia Knowles 26:06

That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run January 23rd to February 9th, 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

Tricia Knowles 26:27

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. Push Play is produced by myself, Trisha Knowles, and Ben Charlin. A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabrielle Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.