Ep. 34 - Exchange (2020)

PuSh Play

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality for this episode is not at the usual standard for PuSh Play.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Fay Nass, Artistic and Executive Director of the frank theatre and Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Fay discuss:

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• How do we explore the relationship between form and content?

• What is the importance of public and private spaces for performance?

• How has your artistic practice grown and evolved?

• Why is the concept of exchange important in theatre?

• What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

About Fay Nass

Fay Nass is a community-engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer and educator. They are the Artistic Director of the frank theatre company and the founder/Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre.

Fay has over 17 years of experience in text-based and devised work deeply rooted in inter-cultural and collaborative approaches. Fay’s work often examines questions of race, gender, sexuality, culture and language through an intersectional lens in order to shift meanings and de-construct paradigms rooted in our society. Fay’s work celebrates liminality and trans-culturalism, and blurs the line between politics and intimate personal stories.

Fay’s work has been presented at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, SummerWorks Festival, Queer Arts Festival, the CULTCH and Firehall Arts Centre. Her readings and experimental work have been presented at various conferences and artist-run galleries in Spain, Berlin and Paris. Their co-creation project Be-Longing was part of the 2021 New York international Film Festival, NICE International Film Festival and Madrid International Film Festival.

Their most recent credits include: co-creating Be-Longing (the frank theatre), co-directing Trans Script Part I: The Women (the frank theatre and Zee Theatre at Firehall Arts Centre), directing She Mami Wata & the Pussy WitchHunt (the frank theatre at PuSh Festival 2020), co-directing Straight White Men (ITSAZOO productions at Gateway Theatre), and dramaturgy for Camera Obscura (Hungry Ghosts) (the frank theatre & QAF). Fay holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University. Currently, they are doing the Artistic Leadership Residency at the National Theatre School of Canada.

As an artistic leader and a practitioner, Fay has deep and involved relationships—both creative and organizational—with a wide spectrum of artists across generations and stylistic practices. As an educator and facilitator, their philosophy and pedagogy are rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

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 are 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 Feynas and is anchored around the 2020 Push Festival. Feynas is a community -engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer, and educator. They are the artistic director of the Frank Theatre Company and the founder artistic director of Ophotic Theatre.

Gabrielle Martin 00:40 Feynas has over 17 years of experience in text -based and devised work deeply rooted in intercultural and collaborative approaches. Established in 1996, the Frank is the oldest professional queer theater company based on the occupied stolen lands of the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh First Nations, collonially called Vancouver.

Gabrielle Martin 01:01 It's one of the few theater organizations in the country led by a gender -queer immigrant woman of color and collaborates with a large community of 2SLGBTQ -plus artists and arts workers. Ophotic Theatre is committed to creating vital and innovative performance.

Gabrielle Martin 01:16 With an emphasis on developing new plays written and or created by women, women of color, queer, queer trans people of color, its approach is distinguished in prioritizing who tells the story and what story they want to tell.

Gabrielle Martin 01:30 Here's my conversation with Feynas.

Gabrielle Martin 01:35 We are here in the stolen and traditional ancestral territories of the post -anish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. It's an absolute privilege to be on these islands and in so -called Vancouver we are downtown, we are close to where you live, close to the push offices and we're going to be in conversation about your relationship with push and you have a relationship with push in two capacities as artistic director of the Frank Theater and as artistic director of the aquatic theater.

Gabrielle Martin 02:07 So we're going to kind of anchor the conversation around the cafe which was a co -production with push actually that premiered finally in 2023 and I say that because that was a journey that began before my time at push but also the Frank Theater presented duets for misunderstood in 2016 or rather push presented duets for misunderstood of shank theater in 2016 and in 2020 when you were at the Frank Theater push presented with the Frank Shumami Wata and the Pre -V witch farms and and since 2022 we've been collaborating because you've been the curator of one of the club push nights wearing your Frank Theater hat.

Gabrielle Martin 02:50 That's right and and and also a co -presenter of Sully Locio which is a festival favorite performance of 2023 by Tiziano Cruz. So a lot of a lot to talk about so let's just go back to the very beginning how did your relationship with push start?

Fay Nass 03:05 So, I started my leadership at the Frank in 2018 and before that there was already a partnership between the Frank and Push under Chris Kachallian and under Norman's leadership. But in 2018, when I started my leadership at the Frank, one of my major focuses was like to focus on these stories of BIPOC queer artists and also to look at the relationship between form and content in a way that is not just,

Fay Nass 03:32 you know, queer BIPOC stories, but in a way that's like the form breaks the Eurocentric framework of storytelling and to show different modes of storytelling and that hasn't very much part of the programming that I have been excited about.

Fay Nass 03:46 So, when the B. Young contacted me and they said that they're interested for me to direct Jim Amiwata the Pussy Witch Hunt, first of all it was a huge honor because I'm a huge fan of their work but also I was like okay so where would be a venue that can kind of hold space for a piece that's really the script is fluid, the form is fluid, it's really questions colonization through a very exciting Jamaican lens as well as like you know it's a sexual cabaret queer wonderful piece,

Fay Nass 04:20 you know.

Gabrielle Martin 04:21 But I know to be young, and I've heard so much about this work. It is like an iconic show that people talk about to this day. I feel like I saw it because I've heard so many people.

Fay Nass 04:32 Yeah and you know it was fantastic like I pitched it to Norman Armour originally and he loved the idea and then Joyce got on board and Joyce and I started talking and it was just like a very beautiful smooth process you know and to be has been always wanting to collaborate with Push.

Fay Nass 04:51 So it was just like a really fantastic opportunity for all this group of people that been thirsted for this collaboration to come together. But also what was exciting is because the script is alive and Ruby is an amazing energetic human who kind of goes with the energy of the audience.

Fay Nass 05:06 Sometimes the show was like 90 minutes and sometimes it was 100 minutes and I have to say as someone who's worked with many festivals the fluidity and flexibility of the festival to allow that was something really beautiful which kind of led me to wanting to continue to collaborate with a festival that understands that one of the notions of decolonization is recognizing that we are not working within this like in a very rigid Eurocentric framework which means that 90 can become 98 if we want to honor a Jamaican artist who is breaking those you know patterns.

Gabrielle Martin 05:41 talk to us about the cafe. What was the cafe and what was the process of realizing for the festival?

Fay Nass 05:46 Yeah, so The Cafe was a project that I started writing about and imagining it in 2008 when I was writing my master thesis, which is really about the idea of proximity in a site -specific show with different audiences.

Fay Nass 06:00 The concept of it came to me as a margin from Iran and a lot of time public spaces like coffee shops were spaces that people had the most political conversations in before and after the revolution in Iran.

Fay Nass 06:12 And yet these are not private spaces and so I wanted to look at the mosaic of Vancouver and the intersections of identity and stories and the conversations that happened in a coffee shop and yet people can eavesdrop and then yet there is a hidden first wall in a sense.

Fay Nass 06:33 But the way that the project would work was really commissioning artists from different voices, I wanted to hear different languages in the piece. So for many years I talked about the project when most organizations were like, it's a really expensive project, at the end we were commissioning 9 playwrights, 14 actors, site -specific pieces means 30, 35, 50 audience members max, right?

Fay Nass 06:56 So financially it's a very challenging thing to do, especially in Vancouver with the ticket prices that we have. So it's as you actually got excited about getting on board and they have a huge history of site -specific work.

Fay Nass 07:11 Apartic Theatre, the company that I found and I'm the artistic director of, focuses on stories of women, immigrants, LGBTQ, BIPOC, but also kind of site -specific and more experimental work. So the two companies came together but we were like, okay, where can we show these pieces, right?

Fay Nass 07:26 And again, we talked to Joyce Rosario and I remember sitting outside in a sunny day with Sebastian Archibald and Joyce and Joyce was like, I love the idea, why not? And really until that time, I haven't seen a lot of site -specific pieces.

Fay Nass 07:41 And so it was like really amazing to get the exact push. And so it was really exciting for Joyce to get excited about it, right? And then, so we started working on it, commissioning, going through the development.

Fay Nass 07:56 And then the pandemic happened, you know, and it was just like really, and then transitions happened, that push. So it felt like, oh, this project, it took me like 10 years to finally get people excited.

Gabrielle Martin 08:07 conversation with Joyce happening in what year?

Fay Nass 08:10 It would have been 2018 -2019, right? Like 18, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 08:15 we got a conversation about it in 2021 and I remember we were supposed to present it in 2022 and the Omicron would happen at the pandemic and I remember being on the phone with you and like trying to figure out how we could still make it work for 2020 until I really tried to find as many creative solutions as possible but it was just because as you mentioned it's uh at intimate it's meant to be experienced in an intimate way and there's a large cast it was just very complicated.

Fay Nass 08:43 almost like opposite of what the health, you know, adversary was, right? And so, yeah, it already got canceled once in 2021, right? Yeah, because like we had to last minute be like, we have 14 actors, we can't put people in that close proximity.

Fay Nass 09:02 And then, and I said the project is over. And I was really excited that when we, you and I talked and you're like, we can still support the project through development fund for to not die. And to also be able to, you know, pay the artists and to actually focus on dramaturgy, because we never work in a way in Vancouver, that is kind of a European style of like, having this duration of time to allow the scripts to actually settle,

Fay Nass 09:26 right? So in some strange ways, where we cried, and we were heartbroken with the support of first and you know, your enlistment in the development of the piece, we could actually keep going and do more dramaturgy, change them with actually some of the script change based on the pandemic, you know, having stuff with like, you know, like hand sanitizer or mask, we added those things for it to become relevant.

Fay Nass 09:47 And the piece was always supposed to be a piece that we can see in a contemporary coffee shop as a relevant piece, right? So yes, then it finally happened in 2023, right? And that was like, just dream come through, you know, and I was like, also like, really fantastic that we had, I think a huge support from Push in development and actually cool productions, which we have never done.

Fay Nass 10:09 It has always been Push being a presenting partner, but in this case, Push was like a huge contributor to the project happening. So thank you.

Gabrielle Martin 10:17 I mean it was an awful much pleasure because it's I think those are the type of pieces that people remember the most. The pieces that are intimate, the pieces that are in non -preventional spaces and I feel like this is a piece that would really adapt like it's built to be adapted and to grow in in its different environments.

Gabrielle Martin 10:39 I would love to see this piece again in another in another space and also because like it's a bit of a choose your own adventure so you get little snippets of conversations here and there which is really fun in terms of like changing the dynamic of the spectator, a little more agency in terms of like the narrative that you experience.

Gabrielle Martin 10:59 And so now like that year also we co -presented Soliloquio and that year also well no 2022 we started the collaboration with Club Push with the Frank, the Frank curating a bigger Club Push which continues this will be its fourth year in 2025.

Gabrielle Martin 11:16 So can you talk about the growth of your artistic practice since you know you first came into relationship with Push in 2020 with Shunami Wata and Deepa Simcha.

Fay Nass 11:29 Yeah. You know, I think that's one of the things that has been very exciting is like this, like, I have always been interested in this idea of exchange and fluidity. And I think, you know, as a producing company and as a new artistic director, I came to push in 2018 -19 with the pitch of Shimami Wata for it to happen in 2020.

Fay Nass 11:51 And it's like, okay, we're a producing company breaking for Shimami Wata happens. Then it's like, okay, now we can be a little bit braver. And what if we pitch something that is not even within the confine of theater and it's in a coffee shop.

Fay Nass 12:05 And then we pitch, you know, the cafe and, you know, then the cafe happens and then you reached out to us, to myself and the enable us and about the international presentation of soliloquy. And I think in that way, that was like the exchange of like, you know, that kind of collaboration of like, okay, like, well, we are the presenting partner, but we can also reach out to communities that they have the network,

Fay Nass 12:31 they have done the work with the LGBTQ communities, and we don't need to do this alone. And we can share this spotlight and we can also benefit from like, you know, their knowledge and their access to the community.

Fay Nass 12:42 So I was really excited to get that email to be like, do you want to partner with us? You know, and, and we have been very interested in, you know, international representation. So, so that happened.

Fay Nass 12:53 And then also, you know, you contacting us about claw push, because one of the things that we do is like, you know, very much like subverting that like relationship between what is the art in the theater spaces versus underground performances, and the excitement of the LGBTQ BIPOC community through drag performances, dance movement, that is not necessarily within the legacy of theater, and that's something that we've been doing,

Fay Nass 13:20 and we're good at, and something that we have like, very strong ties and connections with. So being able to do claw push and highlight the voices of, especially BIPOC, LGBTQ community, within the legacy of push has been exciting both, I think, through the eyes of presenters that are like, oh, this is the texture of the fabric of Vancouver that we don't necessarily see.

Fay Nass 13:42 And also for the artists that they've been wanting to have those platforms in order to showcase their work. So I feel like there are all these different layers that's, that's exciting, both in like, I would say progression, but also in a circular notion of exchange, you know, that is like in a while is like, you know, moving forward, but it is also actually starting from the same place of intention,

Fay Nass 14:04 which is pushing the boundaries, trusting and believing those relationships, and believing that progression is actually has like a circular movements, you know.

Gabrielle Martin 14:13 Well, I personally have benefited very greatly from our relationship growing and just to be able to discuss work with you, you know, whether it's here or in Montreal. And I feel like there's a lot of shared interest and value we have.

Gabrielle Martin 14:26 And I really enjoyed those conversations. And so I'd just be curious to hear your perspective on push the cultural context of push and the significance of push within the local artistic ecology within the city for Frank Peter for a father.

Gabrielle Martin 14:42 Whatever I want to speak to, I would encourage that.

Fay Nass 14:47 I think Pusha is, in my opinion, one of the most important festivals, not only locally, but in Canada. And I think that everything that we just talked about is really about bringing that excitement. I mean, sometimes I personally feel like, oh, Vancouver, but it's just like I look forward to February because it's about that pulse, that exchange.

Fay Nass 15:09 We can all kind of stay in our own silos and not really know what's happening in the world, but also not knowing what's happening in our local community. And I think the cultural context of Pusha is really that awareness of these intersections between what is important in terms of a thriving community locally, but it's also that exchange that happens with international partners.

Fay Nass 15:33 To not be afraid, I think we're in this cultural moment that we all want to do well, but it's also about pushing the boundaries that aesthetic and art forms are speaking for themselves and to not be afraid that things that are other than or the things that we don't know are maybe too much or risky and trusting that our Vancouver audiences and our international audiences are ready for material that may be challenging.

Fay Nass 16:00 And I think with all of those kind of the trust that Norman had in my work and then Joyce and yourself, that is to me the legacy of Push and I think there's intentionality around culture means, exchange by culture means also the fluidity that things are constantly shifting and we need to speak about them, we need to be brave about them and we need to kind of challenge each other in order to benefit in this kind of ecology that we existed.

Fay Nass 16:32 And I think that's something that Push has the power to do and I also think that it's an organization that can be innovative in order to move those conversations forward and I think, yeah, I mean, I hope that it just continues to do so, you know, under your artistic leadership I feel very confident that it will.

Ben Charland 16:58 That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

Ben Charland 17:15 A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

Ben Charland 17:34 And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review.