 I want to welcome you all to the 33rd annual conference of the Literary Managers and Dramateurs. My name is Ken Trinilia and I'm president of LMDA for three more days. About a year and a half ago as I was mad scrambling preparing for last year's conference in Berkeley, California with our amazing VP conferences, Coriana Moffitt. I got an offer out of the blue from our then VP of regional activity, Joanna Falk, to host the next conference here in Toronto bringing the conference back to Canada after five years, when it was previously in Vancouver, but back here to Toronto after 11 years. And I immediately said, like, yes, please. We're a volunteer organization and it's a heck of a lot of work to run the organization, but also particularly to plan a conference. And so I'm going to say thank you many times, but I want to start off the conference by saying thank you to Joanna and Joseph and Coriana and everyone else who's contributed to the running of this conference particularly to our robust group of volunteers who are just taking care of everything that the rest of us don't see. And so please extend your thanks to them soon and often throughout the conference because that's also a lot of hard work. So we can be here and gather and be open. I like to say that our two greatest assets at LMDA are our nimbleness as an intimate organization and the relationships that we develop in the network that we have. And so here I want to encourage everyone to get to know the rest of the people in the room, you know, just make a commitment every day to introduce yourself to three new people and get to know who they are and what they do. We've been able in our small but mighty membership to do a lot of pretty great things in the field and I think that's what we have to offer. So without further ado, I would like to welcome to the stage our conference chair, Joanna Falk. Hi, I love the microphone. Yes, hi, I'm Joanna Falk. I am the literary manager at the Tarragon Theater here in Toronto and yes, I am the conference chair. I'm so pleased to, ooh, I'm doing that with my mind. I'm so happy to see you all here. Welcome to Toronto. How many people is it first time in Toronto? Oh my gosh. Okay, I just want to give you a quick pronunciation lesson. I know it looks like it's pronounced Toronto. None of us say Toronto, we all say Toronto. So it's T-R-O-N-N-O. Toronto. You want to blend in if you don't want to look like, because it always in movies when they're like, I am from Toronto. No, you're not. So it's a big day, not just because the Elm Day conference is starting today. It's also National Indigenous People's Day. Yay. A big thank you to the Canada Council and the Toronto Arts Council for supporting our conference. It means a lot, it helps a lot. And of course, again, thank you to the volunteers. If you have any questions about where to go, what to do, where to go, where to eat lunch, where to get a coffee, where the U.S. Embassy is. We can, they want to, I won't go there. The full conference coordinator, Joseph, has created a fantastic interactive map. If you haven't already looked at it online as part of your conference handbook, he's mapped out every possible thing you might want to know about in the area. Oh, and Wi-Fi. Does everyone know that the Wi-Fi password is on the back of your, I know. I know. Yeah. We've got pretty much everything, hopefully. And you should only have to log in once, but if not, then it's right there. And all the addresses of all of your hotel, the pub, it's quite local. So if you have any questions about what beers they have on tap, Ryan will be the person to tell you that. Just to tell you a little bit about the setup of the conference. So this whole floor is ours. There's not going to be anyone else up here. As you may have noticed, there's only two rooms, seemingly, at the moment. But through the magic of technology, a wall will be created, ironically. In between sessions. So this will be called session room one. This will be called session room two. And in the back is session room three, which is mostly where this sort of academic papers are being presented. There's schedules posted on each of the doors. But if you have any questions about where you're supposed to be, again, ask a volunteer. The theme, crossing borders. I thought of that theme a year ago when I was in Berkeley. And it still is a theme that obviously continues to resonate. I didn't add a colon descriptor of what I meant by crossing borders because I wanted you all to interpret it the way you thought about crossing borders and what borders you may be crossing in your life, in your work, as dramaturgs, as literary managers. When I thought about crossing borders, for me, I've been a member of Elm Day for 20 years or so. And what I've really loved about it is going to the U.S. and learning a lot about what Americans are doing. Because it's quite different from what we all are doing. So I really wanted to encourage folks to think about what borders they're crossing and especially when our American colleagues are coming here to Canada to really engage with us about what we do here. We may all kind of look the same as you, but it's a whole other country. And we have a different theatrical culture. We think differently about things maybe than you do sometimes. But I think there's great value in that. And I really encourage all of you to go to sessions that aren't about your own country, that aren't about things you already know about. Buy a Canadian play if you've never read one. See a Canadian play if you've never seen one. While you're here, there's plenty of them going on. And talk to some folks that are from a place that you're not. I'm going to do that. And please talk to me. Anything else? Is there anything else, Coriana? You're good. Oh, thank you. Where we are right now, I'm going to ask Phalen Johnson to come up and do an acknowledgement for us. Phalen. So my name's Phalen Johnson. I am Mohawk and Tuscarora from Six Nations Reserve. That's where my people are settled now, but that is not always where we were settled. I'm a playwright and a dramaturge and a director heading in all of those directions, mostly a playwright and a podcaster now. So, yeah, I know, right? It's amazing how those things feed into each other. But we'll talk more about that later. So the land that we are on now is the traditional land of many Indigenous nations. And so I know we have some cousins from the south here today. And so Indigenous First Nations, Native American, Native American Indian, all of those terms sort of encompass that. And so on this day it feels really important to acknowledge our history. But not just today. I think on every day we need to acknowledge the land that we stand on. And the land that we stand on is not just about it being Indigenous land. It's about the land that we all stand on and stewardship and how we are all responsible for this land. A few months ago I had the opportunity to go over to the UK. And it was a really complex thing for me because I didn't know how to be on someone else's land. It was the first time that I was in sort of really aware of the fact that I was going to be standing on someone else's land. So I had to think a lot about what that would be like for me as an Indigenous person going over to the place where all of the papers were signed and all of the policy was made. And so that was a big light bulb moment for me in how I thought about that. And so what I thought was when I go over I will try and be a good guest. I will be polite. I will put my garbage where it goes. And I will walk softly. And so I think it's important that no matter where you come from and no matter how long your people may have been on this land that we all walk softly and take care of where we are. So this territory has been host to many different nations. How many people here are familiar with land acknowledgments? Damn. That's great. My land acknowledgments are a little bit different than you might hear. One, I try not to read them off a phone or a piece of paper. Two, here at this dramaturgic conference I wanted to give you a little bit of historical context as to where we are now. So Toronto is on Lake Ontario which is just down that way, right? I've never been in this building. And so that makes it part of the Great Lake system. The Great Lake system meant that there were a lot of nations traveling in and out of this area for thousands and thousands of years. There was trade. There was intermarriage. There was war. And so that means there were a lot of nations intermingling. And some of those nations you may hear about are called the Haudenosaunee. Sometimes called the Six Nations or the Iroquois. Those are my people. So they were in and out of this area. Also the Wendat, sometimes called the Huron. The Huron is sort of a term that has fallen out of favour now and is frequently considered derogatory. So I sort of try and steer people away from that terminology. And then the Anishinaabe or Ojibwe, as you may hear them called, most specifically and most recently, the Mississaugas of the New Credit, who were the nation who negotiated the Toronto purchase with the crime. So that's how that all works. When the Mississaugas of the New Credit did their negotiation, they did ask to retain some of the waterways for fishing and hunting, as well as the Toronto Islands, which were still kind of in dispute. A lot of people from Mississauga who now live right next door to my people say that they never gave up that piece of land because it was considered sacred. So I just want to put those, those sort of research things into your head and give you a bit of context about where we are. We are very close to the waterfront, which also means, you know, always means ceremony, always means trade routes. I ask you if you're a visitor or if you are settled here in this area when you walk through the city today to take into consideration things that you might not necessarily consider as monuments or landmarks, things like the Dawn Valley, which is very close to us, things like the waterfront. All of these things, these are monuments in our country and they are much older than any of the highways or roadways we have. Things like Young Street, built over one of the oldest indigenous trails in the country, things like Davenport Road. All of those places have history and historical significance. And I invite you to think about where your feet land as you walk through the city today. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Galen. And if you want to know a little more about Toronto's indigenous history, there is still time to sign up for the first story bus tour. It's happening tomorrow from 2 to 5. It's going to take you through, it's a bus tour that, it's going to sort of go east in Toronto and talk about the indigenous history of the land. So if you want to sign up for that, there's still time. So being a conference chair is great because I get to invite folks to talk to you all that I love. And so our first session is about features three gals who do this amazing podcast called The Secret Life of Canada. If you haven't listened to it yet, it's this incredible podcast that I think dramaturgist Canada. I'm Canadian. I was born and raised here. I did my history lessons. But once I started listening to their podcast, I realized I really hardly knew anything about Canada. And what I perceive as Canada is not maybe the Canada that we are. The first episode I listened to was about BAM, a beautiful spot that maybe some of you have spent some time in. And I learned a lot about the history of BAM. But in a way that was, on the one hand, made me feel bad that I didn't already know this, but Phelan and Leah, who are the hosts of the podcast, are so great and charming and funny and remind me that it's okay that Canada's history is not perfect and that it's useful and great to know as much as I can about this country. So I'm going to ask Phelan and Leah Simone Bowen and their research assistant, Aaron Brandenburg, to come up and they're going to chat about their podcast and the secret life of Canada. Come on out. We're going to try and not use the mic here. Okay. Yeah, okay. I'm a research assistant on some of the episodes. So this is like deep, deep, deep background. I'm more of a huge fan. That's it. She helps us out a lot. So the secret life of Canada is a podcast. It was one of the top podcasts in 2017 on multiple publications lists. Tell us about your podcast. Yeah. So the podcast Phelan and I decided to start this podcast last year. It was Canada 150, a big celebration of Canada essentially becoming a country. I'm using air quotes. So during Canada 150, a huge amount of funding in the Canadian art sector and the Canadian government went to telling stories of Canada. And we would meet periodically. We meet, we're both playwrights. We do a lot of writing that works in history. And we would meet often and just talk about, wow, I can't believe this weird thing got funding. And why are they telling this story again? And it was the same stories. We hear the same stories throughout our education. And those are usually the War of 1812, which yes did involve burning down the White House, even though we didn't burn down the White House. But it is a faith war in Canada and it involves a lot of, you know, the first prime minister or the second prime minister. It's a lot of those stories. And the stories that we would meet and talk about were not those stories. We would meet and go like, hey, did you hear that this, you know, this indigenous woman created this thing and nobody knows and so on and so forth. So we thought, and you could jump in at any time, we thought, why don't we try and start a podcast because development, as you all know, of doing a play is like five years, you do it, five people come and say, I'll put it in your drawer and you know. And so we thought, well maybe podcasting, it seems successful, we could, you know, put out a couple episodes pretty fast and see if anyone responds to them. And so we took a workshop with a podcast producer who works on a lot of podcasts in Canada and immediately after she asked us, it was a two hour workshop, we did a little promo there, she asked us, can I produce your podcast? And we said, thank God, yes. So we put out the first episode, the first episode like Joanna said was on BAM and it's a place that especially the art community in Canada goes to, there's a retreat there and an art center and I grew up in Alberta and BAM is a place of magic for Canada. And the thing about BAM though is it was created, it was essentially built by internees, the Canadian government interned basically Canadian citizens who were of European, German and Ukrainian descent during World War I and they put them to work creating our Canadian park system. So people died there, they built the roads, it was, it was perilous. Not only that but the Indigenous people that lived in BAM and surrounded the area were kicked off the land, fenced off, prevented, they basically had park passes to get into their land to pick medicines or do any ceremony and for years we're not allowed into BAM except for one day which was an Indian day and they would be paraded out, tourists would take pictures and so that is BAM's history. And so we released this episode and our producer said, you know, for a Canadian podcast, Indy, it's going to be about 2,000 at the most people who listen to it which we thought, cool. She said, but maybe it's only going to be 100 and I was like, 100? What happened is half a million people downloaded that. We became apparent to us that this history that we thought was maybe only interesting to the people we had been telling these stories in and the theatre realm turns out that it was a lot more interesting and Canadians did have an appetite to hear, you know, how history has really been revised. And so that's the podcast. Yeah, and I think Canada 150 did us a ginormous favour of happening when we did our podcast. Let's just say it happened that way. It gave Canadians a different frame of reference. Like there was a definite, because the backlash to Canada 150 was so large, at least in the Indigenous community and I think Canadians started to question a little bit more and so I think that really did give us a bit of a the door open to crack and so we got to sneak through and say all these things and people were more, their ears were more receptive to hearing those things I found as opposed to doing it. I don't think we would get away with this like maybe even five years ago. I think the impact and the listenership would be much smaller. Maybe I don't need to explain but usually if you mentioned that you're doing a project about Canadian history, people's eyes kind of filling you up. Not interesting. Not interesting. Which I always found really ironic because I think there's so much fascinating history that we just don't know about and it's always, you hear these stories, you're like why didn't I know this? Why wasn't I taught this in school? Why didn't I know this fascinating history that somehow lost, or buried, or forgotten? I think honestly I know more probably about American history and British history than I do. I mean now that's changed but that's what I learned in elementary, junior high and high school. It was always framed as how we were perceived by these other countries and how they shaped us and less about how we shaped ourselves and what we're doing. And this building is a perfect example of how things are changing. So Toronto is a, as you may have noticed a city of glass and a beautiful city that I love that bulldozes and tears down any sort of any sort of brick building that has any bit of history or beauty. I'm not there but I'm not going to. And you can. Because they build something up and they call it the like, Rexall Center or the corporate name here center. And this building, which is very new this is a very new development. It's only been here two, three years now. This is named Thornton and Lucy Blackburn Center and they are escaped slaves from the U.S. They came from Kentucky went through Detroit. There's a huge amount of history. I won't go into all of it but they finally made it to Toronto and they lived kind of over over there. I can't really explain but they lived over there kind of at the corner of Cherry Street. There's a school there and they started a cab company after they escaped and it was the first cab in Toronto and then they got more cabs and more cabs and eventually those horse and buggies turned into cars and Thornton painted them red and yellow and they were really well known in Toronto and when the Toronto Transit Commission decided to build subways and build public transit, they painted it red and yellow because everyone knew Thornton's cab company and they knew that's public transit. That's what it's going to read as public transit. And Thornton and Lucy became millionaires. They were well regarded in their community. There was a huge community of escaped African-Americans and African-Canadians who settled here and the Irish also who were also basically like black people at the time meaning nobody wanted them around. So they all lived in this area. So this is a really interesting area and so when this building built and they called it the Thornton and Lucy Blackwood Centre I was like what? So it shows me how things are changing and how things, it's amazing that they would name a building after them. It's great. Yeah. So maybe that goes into No, I'm like what was the question? What was the question? People need to know. Everyone just went boom. Thanks, Leah. I think the question was why don't we know these stories? I think part of it is denial. Denial of history. It's an ugly history. I think in America the genocide from indigenous people was done through bullets and killing pretty overtly. War was different. We have paper war. Those wars are both going on. I think America definitely has taken on more of a paper war now but those war still happen and I think there's something about that. The influence of the British on us and our politeness, our polite genocide I think that's part of it. I think there is but if we don't embrace those things one, we're not interesting. Let's just embrace those things that are the true history of what happened here because we need to know those to be better and to move forward and we also need to know those things so that we don't do it again and it's interesting history. Canadian history is interesting history. It's just not the history that's presented in the textbooks that you're getting which I mean for the most part it's bullshit anyway. Yeah. There's a lot of feedback from the podcast and mostly positive but a lot of the negative feedback is you have we do have a tone in our podcast we do have opinions and we do make a lot of jokes because it's hard history and it's hard to get through and that's how we talk about it so it wasn't like we were trying to get a prescribed way of being for us but it's easier to get through when you can take a break and tell some Britney Spears jokes and then jump back into but that was making well maybe we could go into a bit of the process how do you choose the stories how do you we have a lot we invite the Listers to write in and suggest things so we definitely have a stack of those like there is no shortage there's so many internet holes to fall down these days that like we'll be looking at one thing and then all of a sudden we'll be over here looking at a different thing so then that idea gets banked and then we'll be going this way and then we find something else and that idea gets banked and so we try to keep track of all of those things but once we find one that we really want to hold on to then the research really begins and so that we go to the reference a lot reference library in Toronto is really big and expansive and you know the other week or the other month we had a book from 1914 never opened, no one had ever taken it out oh god so and it had a twig on it had a little twig on the front this little detail and it was about the national park system because we're looking at that more right now and no gloves, no nothing just like flip through it and it tells you all about Canadian like the Canadian park system and why it was being built and you know what the mandate of it was and so we spend a lot of time there and talking to people for me I'm working on one in the Yukon right now so the first thing I did was email a vet my friend over there and say because she lived in the Yukon and I was like who should I talk to so a lot of that it's like we call it mox and telegraph so it's like we talk to each other so that we know we're talking to the right people and I'm getting the like I want to specifically for me I want to get the indigenous foundations of that place and I want to make sure that I'm talking to the right people so I called a bunch of friendship centers different cultural centers spoke to as many people as I could send emails to as many people as I could sometimes people answer you sometimes they don't sometimes they want to talk sometimes they do not and then you know and then Lee and I we start scripting it and passing it back and forth yeah I think it's I mean for us it's how do we how do we extract first of all when you're looking especially in history textbooks and history books it's like reading reading through the material almost like you read the material and then you go like what's behind this material so it's often like such and such sir such and such did all of these things and his wife was also there and so I who was his wife and what was she doing and you know like it's it's reading between the lines so it is it is it takes a lot of time and I think because the project is really about changing the lens and changing the frame it's about looking at as many sources as possible so you know I try to read at least three if not five of the same story from a different different voices and then try and filter that to what is the actual what's the actual story here and yeah but I have to say one of the the biggest thing about this process that is interesting is how scary it is to work with history because we realize you know it's not just about putting together a script and making a funny podcast even though that is part of what we do but it is feeling a huge responsibility to the groups that we're telling because I think that one of the things that you said to me was like somebody had asked you you know we get a lot of just colleagues say like hey Lea um do you know any black people or whatever like hey Phelan do you know like a creeper or whatever and it's like well you know how we know is we went out into the work and we're not born knowing this information we have to do the work and we have to read and we have to do the research so why don't you do that I've gone off topic again I'm trying to I think that's important that we do position ourselves not as historians we position ourselves as curious people and I think that's really important because the knowledge is accessible the reference library is a public building like these stories do exist and it's not that hard to find them if you just dig a little bit and so I think for me that's a big part of it as well is inviting people to be curious about this place that we live in and what happened here and I think you're not only going to the historical records to the libraries you're reaching out to communities right so in a lot of cases these stories are known in specific communities like I happen to know about the Banff internment camps because my grandfather was part of one during anyway but it's grandfather was part of an internment camp in the Second World War that's what she just clasped over yes yes that kind of history is known in this particular communities and so you're not only referencing the books and the textbooks and things like that you're actually talking with people getting their side of the story which I think is also really lovely in addition to your humor and your personalities and your very charming when you explain these things it's also people who usually aren't a part of the story we hear about community history telling their own story yeah and it's weird because I think it is part of that I mean one thing I would say that is a stereotype about Canadians that might be true is the modesty and I think it plays out in different forms and one of that is that we're telling our stories in our communities and not maybe as much outright so you had the story about your grandfather and the Ukrainian community which I grew up around I had no idea that these interments camps happened and it reverberated throughout generations and so the podcast is really about pushing out those those stories because Canada in our history we like to we really like to promote the stories that make us look good and we don't have any sort of real critical conversations about the stories that don't make us look good and I really feel as a country just like as a person to get better you have to look at your flaws and go like how can I work on those and make them better I think we have to do that as a country and so that's the secret life of Canada is really for me a love letter to Canada even though we call Canada most episodes we criticize Canada a lot I feel like for me it is that's the relationship it's like a boyfriend you just want him to get better he's going to work on himself in this scenario we want to stay together we don't want you to break up with us and then marry the next girl you have to work in and never get married also the lovely part of it is you do celebrate it the episode talking about the snacks or the food of Canada which I think was a lovely some could say frivolous but I learned a lot about this country through the history of buttertarts and through the history of cuisine we wanted to do some later episodes because we do really heavy heavy material the episode that we did last month was on the statues the most popular statues in Canada because one of our mandates of the podcast is really to to promote the untold and undertold stories of Canada and that meant not telling the Prime Minister's stories not telling the general stories we've heard enough of those but more and more people said actually tell the full story of these men because they're not we only hear the good stuff so we did that episode which was really hard to get through and really difficult material it's actually quite a funny episode and so we counter balanced that with episodes about snacks we did an episode about feminism but we framed it all through this one book that won a Governor General's literary award which is a very esteemed award here in Canada it's called Bear it was published in 1976 and it's about a woman who has a sexual relationship with a bear and that was a really fun episode to do and people really responded to bear sex the words cartilaginous sheath are like forever broken in my head but on the other side of that the majority of the being real the majority of the episodes do have a heavy undertone and so it was something that I think we sort of struggled I don't know not struggled I think we found it pretty quickly but it was something that I know I definitely felt internally a struggle with like well how jokie can we be and how serious like how do we keep them listening without having them turn off and then also like what is the dramaturgical arc of this of this thing how do we keep the audience and how does that story become cohesive but it does you know it costs these stories cost you know there's it's hard to know all these things at a certain point so I understand why the majority of you know my many Canadians don't know this because it's a hard history and it definitely has torn a strip off us at that point it's like damn your broke me and that was only episode 2 but yeah it's really hard but I think that's the same with you know a lot of in terms of theater there are plays that cost a lot I think most of the time after you finish writing one or working on one you walk away and you were changed and I feel I definitely feel that there is something akin to that in this project well let's talk about that so you're both playwrights you're both performers, producers what are the what are the skills you use as podcasters for what are the things you had to get better at or learn to do this yeah I mean the funny thing is we've met a lot of Canadian media people now and they all say like how do you have these skills like how how are you doing this and honestly it's playwriting, it's theater the podcast that is what it is it wasn't a huge stretch for us to do it I think one of the main differences between doing a podcast and doing theater is in a theater mostly they can't leave I know they can but in Canada they're very polite here and so podcast they will turn it off so we had to figure out how to develop a way of getting out the history and then almost doing a mini break for the audience like do two minutes of history and then a break and two more minutes of history and then a break because that's our attention span now right people don't have a huge attention span to listen to this kind of material so that was an interesting thing to develop and so that's what we do with our scripts we put in all the history and then we try and kind of put an S through it with comedy and ridiculousness so people will stay with us is that improvised, is that scripted I mean like when you hear the show it sounds like you guys are just geniuses scripted totally scripted I felt scared to admit to people at first I was like no I'm just that smart well I'm not I'll only speak for myself no it's scripted like facts, dates, history because again we have a huge responsibility to tell the story that's already been told wrong to tell it better and so we attempt like we have to script it and then we have things written in the script that like I'll make a joke for Leah and then in brackets I'll say or something better and then she can come into the Google Doc and like write her joke or she can say well what about this here and so we, there are it's usually the jokey bits that are the off script if we're having like a particularly goofy day then like sometimes I'll just I'll have to be rained in yeah the jokes we do improvise we'll know the section that we improvise and talk but everything else is scripted and yeah we can't go off that script because it's history and we don't want to get letters you know but it is having the training as actors and performers and people who have to speak publicly to be able to lift off the page like you know being able to have that thing in front of you or the screen in front of you and lift it on your first try you know and part of our process is also there's one lead person who writes the script so Phelan will write a script and when she's ready I will basically go in and dramaturg her script and I'll go this doesn't make sense or I don't understand this part especially when we're telling stories that are closer to ourselves like any playwright sometimes I go I know this makes sense to you but you need to break it down like in very you know very clear for this audience because they're not going to have all the context that we have so sometimes it feels a bit simplified that we have to really simplify the history but you know learning very quickly that how many schools are using this podcast how many kids listen to the podcast we feel a big responsibility to make it clear and kind of digestible I just want to mention on the website are show notes for every single episode your sources are documented you've got more information there's web links so I think it's clear that we're not just pulling this out of the air for episodes one to four when we had we had money there was somebody doing that but we don't do that anymore because of time yeah so people but we hope at some point we'll be able to get that happening again but the lesson was so in podcasting what they always tell you is do show notes you need to have a website where they do show notes nobody reads the show notes that's what we've learned we've been told from other podcasters that people just don't go in so this is how it's this intimate like relationship that people are getting this information yeah I think we're going to open it up to questions now yeah talk more about what you've learned in terms of form this is an audio form as you've gone in being storytellers being people in a theater background which is a seeing place what is the podcast world and we're talking about the intimacy with this audio what have you learned about the audio form that leon does a really good American man accent show it to you later I'll let her American man it's really good yeah we do care we'll make each other do things to help create yeah to create the world to create interesting things with music and accents sometimes terrible accents but to help build that world one of the things that we also learned really early on was how to because I think we're used to writing stage directions but to write the lake of this place is this color and the dunes of here are like this and the trees are deciduous you have to learn to say your stage directions which was the thing that I was like oh yeah we have to describe the place so that they can see it in their head those were some of the first things that I learned learning how to make a historical quote jump off the page and so we found the best way to do that was to put some music underneath it and do the character even though it felt a bit ridiculous people really responded to us doing man man we basically just do a lot of women's stories were written down not a lot of play on a man yeah there was a question half a million listeners is pretty high so how did you get that quote to the audience we're being funded at that time so we did have a little bit of support but they weren't pushing it much they really didn't anticipate that the project would be as successful as it was which in some ways worked to our advantage later on because we got to be a surprise and how great is that I think one of the things is we released the first episode over Labor Day weekend was it Labor Day? and that's a weekend where people leave the city and they listen to radio and podcasts and so I think because it was released over that weekend people started sharing it because that weekend it went from not being on the iTunes charts to being on it to being number two it was above Oprah and this American life but not Joe Rogan yeah so I don't know it actually was quite organic yeah I'm curious about how you work with duration because there seems like there's a lot of freedom with podcast world where you can actually figure out how you want to tell a story and where stories beginning and end are and so are you is there more freedom and duration for you guys in terms of the work that you're doing and how does that influence your thoughts about playwriting and performance perhaps? we have a pretty strict policy of 40 minutes and under because I have no attention span like personally I try and create things that I want to listen to and so I can't listen to a podcast listen to a podcast I can't listen to things that are super long personally um you don't have you don't have to do it yeah so we try and keep it 40 minutes would be a long one we try to keep it between 30 and 40 because we just don't feel a lot of people really can sustain I mean there are podcasts that are like two hours long people listen to them in increments but it's really important the stories that we tell that you hear the full beginning to end um and that's also because personally I can't do like a three act play now that's hard for me to get it's gotta be really amazing with a bar max ironically I am writing a three act thing right now I'm working I'm working on an opera that is three acts it's an adaptation so I shouldn't have said that but yeah I just think that's we just want to make it as digestible for people and you also do these teasers do you call them they're kind of mini episodes mini shout outs so are those like just trying to get as many stories as possible well I think I mean it serves a bunch of purposes it gets us to you know usually like three to four minutes long sometimes a little bit shorter than that and they're about people usually people who have either done something important in Canadian history or consider themselves Canadian or live in this place called Canada and so those are just to yeah to get more information out to tell those stories but also in the world of podcasting is about content and how content is key right and to maintain generating content and to keep things going and to keep your feed active because that keeps people coming back and keeps people listening if they know that they're more frequently twice a month is what we do they'll be something new to listen to so they're sort of a practical and you know a content reason for that yeah we do other things so we can't we basically do it twice a month and one is a short shout out and one is a longer episode so I'm sort of ripping off what I can ask you but also looking at you as producers as writers and as performers and clearly you don't have a brother's dream problem where you gather the stories and one wants to censor them and one does them so they sound pretty like minded and yet I find most podcasts have a team that there's some kind of differentiation and they play against them off of each other do you have that creative tension vibe that you're different and does that determine who does which impersonation I think we're pretty like minded you have to push work off on each other I'm like you do it you do it you'll get the script and then all of a sudden they'll be like alright like Leah sings and I'm like Valen gives her current opinion on Justin Trudeau and the Canadian Government or whatever right? No we're lucky that we're really well together the only thing is I think like sometimes my jokes get a bit dirty because of the kids Leah's very aware of the kids and so my jokes sometimes my jokes have to go sometimes I fight for them to stay it's funny in the beginning I swore a lot I was like let's take everyone to task and I swore a lot and then people were like my nine year old just listen to your podcast and I was like okay let's censor ourselves the reason our podcast works is because I'm a first generation Canadian so I come in with that frame of mind and that Valen is an indigenous and so when we're storytelling I try when she's building this framework of indigenous storytelling in each episode I try to frame myself as the average Canadian that doesn't know anything because most of the stories that we find I had no idea so it's not coming from a place of pretending usually I'm researching and going I have no idea and I think that's another reason people connect to the podcast because even though we take the government and basically a lot of the Canadian people to task we do say throughout like oh I had no idea did you have any idea so we're not accusatory in saying to the audience you should have known this as well and you should feel bad it's like we all didn't know and so I think that's why the relationship on on air works I think it's also important to know that we we met working at a theater company in administration roles we've worked we met working at native earth performing arts so we already had a good foundation I was like she's good people but there's this there's this idea there's this thing that we get emails constantly but people say can you just do an indigenous one just do an indigenous one that tells me everything no right here you are and so that's like a big part of the starting because it's like whatever place we're in we're like okay well who was there first who were the first people who were in that area can we trace to what history can we trace there and then we start there so in you know I think by the very by the fact that we you know we start in that place every episode is an indigenous episode for me it is yeah and I we should say that event Nolan was sitting here who's the former artistic director of native earth is really responsible for this podcast but she hired me and she was very generous I was hired at native earth to be an outreach coordinator when I moved to Toronto I knew zero about indigenous history and that was my job was to create like the show what do you call it study guys and so I'd be sitting in the office and be like everyone this is all indigenous people did you guys know residential school it lasted until like the 80s and then you're like yeah that's what we try to be in the podcast not shaming it's not it's okay to not know because how would you know it's sometimes very well hidden and some of it's just coming to light and so it's not about how dare you not know this you're a racist it's not about that it's about really for us it's about sharing this because we feel really passionately about this stuff and we want to make something where someone goes I don't know anything about this I want to know something about this oh there's this I'll listen to this and then I'll know something about it have you got any black or you know the different tack you've taken on you know the history that yeah you can read our iTunes reviews yeah if you want to hear some native woman or I don't like it here go back to where you're from go back go back to where you're from and I'm like Barbados is beautiful and I'll go anytime line yeah I mean there are people yes we get a lot of negative feedback but I don't care so much about it it's surprising I don't know I don't care because if you weren't pissing people off you wouldn't be doing it right like if we were making everyone happy then we would definitely be doing something very wrong and that history is really an opinion it's always been opinionated it's always been told through someone with a perspective and a mindset and so this is our perspective and mindset and if you want to find that information or else you're welcome a podcast is a free thing we certainly don't make anyone listen to it except our family because we're theater people and that's what you got we're theater people what else any other questions though this must be an important one what you've already shared with us today I'm caught by your statement about the heaviness of the stories that the historical stories that you start out with and the ways that you lace them with liberate comedy to help your audience through a heavy lifting that means that you as makers have to do the heavy lifting without that so what are some of the strategies you've discovered to keep yourselves going keep yourselves healthy while you're taking that full impact on that kind of thing yeah we did shots that one time but I mean but it was more than that but it was more than that I think we realized very early on I think it was Ipperwash because I was really busted I busted myself which is a thing that I think many of us understand it happens like you hurt yourself by taking on the responsibility of a story that is so big and so painful and so hard to tell and you feel such a great responsibility to do it right and beholden to the people that you're speaking about that you combust yourself and so I think when we were about to record after I think it was after we recorded Ipperwash Leah brought a bottle of rum from Barbados and these little tiny Canadian shot glasses and after we were done recording we all just like looked at each other and said you know like let's take care of each other but I think it's you know it's like those it's the ceremonies that we make we're careful with each other we try to work in person more and not be so satellite so that we aren't so isolated because writing is very isolating and especially when you're telling these big hard stories and you sometimes get lost in your head so I think yeah like you know and it's also about turning off which you know I think I'm doing the things that for me I like to cook and I really like to make time for myself just to do something with my hands where I'm not looking at a screen and it's about tactile stuff you know I think it's just like any other kind of art form that you need to break from because it can get hard and heavy yeah I think I've realized because I was pretty much crying every episode like not on not while we were recording but I would take a break and cry and then be like hey da da da da let's do maintenance and so I realized like I needed to get that out before we record it so that I was doing the best for this community whoever we're talking about and getting out the story so I try and let it go before we record but sometimes it's hard especially when you're doing things you know we have accelerated schedules we'll have to record a couple all at once the statues the one that we just did on statues was really hard for me I don't know why well I know why this the history was really hard but I think when I'm really discovering new information for the first time or it's about yeah it's hard to get through so that that one yeah so Phelan just like would watch me cry and be like okay ready for another one yeah we go into it but we're still navigating that for sure yeah question over here yeah so you mentioned that the first four episodes you had some funding for so how are you keeping it going and how can people support you we have a Patreon and so yeah it's on our website yeah if you google us we're on twitter it's links to all that so yeah we have a Patreon that covers some of it it's not much but at this point like it's hard to not we're not putting it down we're going to keep going because it's there's a desire for it like we did a talk in Waterloo a couple months I don't even know when that was like a month or two ago and this mother brought her kid they drove from Dundas, Ontario so like not too far probably about an hour and the little girl she had such a great question she was like where do you find your sources so if you're not finding these standard sources where are you finding your sources well we're like great questions I let you answer that I was like oh I've got some excitement it was because she's a young she's a young person and so after what she came up to us and I guess her mom was homeschooling her and they saw that we were going to be there so they drove out and she was really excited and they used the shows part of their curriculum so those kinds of like that's although it's an immense pressure it's like it's also really a satisfying pressure to have put on you to know that there's a change and I can be optimistic about the world knowing that if this history goes out into the world then there are young people who are soaking it up and they're going to make this place better that's my hope anyway okay, yes I'm glad you mentioned that about the big young girl that asked about your sources because I was curious if you had a favorite tool or resource that you find yourself over and over to really dig into this history I find well it varies like Philan said I've tried to find a source that's closest to the community that we're dealing with right so there are a lot of Canadian history resources right out by the Canadian government and those are very helpful thank you, thank you for Dan Lewis I know right this is a second time this is a new episode right now oh really? how did you do that? yeah, just while we're here so Canadian government has a lot of resources but I always try and find the book or the website by the community especially if it's an Inuit community or First Nation or the Filipino whoever it is I find actually a lot of times when we're doing a culturally specific community I find their cultural association web page I always start with these like rinky web pages that's like the blah blah blah association and I look through all of their material and then I go from there because I want the main source yeah like I call I call the cultural center in Dawson city to talk to them and most people are like yeah let's talk and then they'll either email you a list of sources or like oh that book was published by us in our small community but I have a PDF I think I'll send it to you and then you'll get this PDF from this book that doesn't really exist outside the Yukon and you're like amazing for the Inuit for the north episode that we wrote so that deals with Canada's north which was a huge learning curve for me I think as it was for most as it is for most Canadians the north I think is one of our most misunderstood and it's just we don't know a lot about it the average person living in Canada doesn't know much about the north and so I went to a cultural competency training a two day training session where I sat there and they gave me history and I got to speak to an elder so it's like just keeping your eye out for those kinds of opportunities I like to look at the national film board website because they have films going back you know to like the late 60s and 70s and so there's something about just seeing footage of places and people in a time that helps put me in the mindset documentaries if I can find them are a nice easy way or sometimes I think easy and then I just have like page notes to go through but also like the library's been it's a place that I didn't really visit much until like I did when I was in school and then when I was you know Toronto reference library's pretty good the Jesuit archives are pretty terrifying yeah and it's been interesting how generous people have been to us to have the conversation really early on I didn't want to try to phone anyone like are they even you know say you're doing a podcast like okay everyone has a podcast but people have been really generous we did an episode on virtual Nova Scotia which is Nova Scotia's really one of the areas that a lot of African-Americans came to or were brought to and so there's a huge African-Canadian community there and I got to talk to Lawrence Hill who wrote The Book of Negroes who I mean that book is really about that area and that time and place and his parents are both scholars he was very generous not only talking to me but then being like okay check out this link if you ever need anything again I'm like are you busy like you're doing so much but thank you yeah like there are experts out there and all of this stuff it's just that we don't cross their work in a consumable way and so those people generally are pretty excited to talk about their work they're sometimes their life's work and have it put out into the world in a bigger way and especially you know if we do get to interview them we can accredit it to them that's like that's the bonus so I think we have time for one more question any burning questions out there? so it seems like a delightful radical research excitement that can take you a bunch of photographs and change your narrative idea and just sort of blow up a whole premise of our podcast so I'm just wondering practically like how long it takes you to research something and sort of like how do you create that in when you find things that are deviating from the topic you're talking about? Yes It depends I think sometimes things have to happen faster than I want them to but they have to happen so you know a lot of the time I think the nice thing is that what we can say is you know this is the history of this place we don't have time to tell you everything so we've just grabbed these things that we want to tell you about but we invite you to either like look at this book or check out this website or you know read this person and you can learn more about it but we've decided to talk about these things and so that helps us if the time pressure is like well I really want to talk about this thing but I'm not 100% sure about that fact but we'll leave it out knowing that hopefully that will either come back maybe later on in a shout out or another podcast or we can at least sort of address some things about that place or person or thing Best case scenario it's usually about a month from beginning research to end but it's hard with us because we've worked on so many plays about Canadian history we do have a lot of stuff in our back pocket where we go okay I remember this okay so we're going to put him in but about a month but we've done two weeks we've done a week that's hurt that hurts yeah and it's also you know because we do have like other things happening like work other work that has to happen and so you know sometimes it's really it can be a real crunch but and there's you know stress and no sleep you know what you guys do alright so what's the website so the website is secretlifecanada.com or .ca or you can find us on iTunes or any of the portals there's so many portals to get podcasts whatever it is we're there I like that our web domain crosses borders and that's one that would probably get cut feels okay yeah thank you very much