Interview with Richard Rowberry 02

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Transcript for Interview with Richard Rowberry 02

https://doi.org/10.58066/134g-1n37

This transcript was created in part by using artificial intelligence, errors and inaccuracies may be present.

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and and we're no longer able to get any kind of funding from Canada Council. I went

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to EDAM and here was this modern dance company with a core audience of about

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seven or eight hundred people, lo and behold.

The same thing. And yeah,

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absolutely the same thing with funding of a hundred and twenty five thousand a

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year core operating.

Oh gosh, lovely. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I went in there and I got a

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couple of other grants

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almost immediately too. I was really good at grant writing. Okay. It's my talent for fiction. It helps.

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Yeah. And I could I could bullshit dance.

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I mean what do you write about modern dance, or the point of modern dance?

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What is the dance choreographer trying to convey? I was

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really good at bullshitting that.

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Yeah yeah yeah. Anyway, could we move on to the food show? Just a few words. Yes, yes. Now
after

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three penny and under milkwood we're

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back to an original creative effort by

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the so-called collective.

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Yes, yeah and the reason of course for that was that

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Canada Council cracked the whip.

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Yeah, they wanted that kind of thing that's

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what you're all about. They said if we're going to fund you, this is your mandate,

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we're going to fund you for this. To hell with the fact that that's not what

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people wanted. To hell with the people.

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Once again Blake Parker contributed I think. Remember that? Did he? Yeah well we were all

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supposed to yeah he probably did we were all supposed to come up with sketches.

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And you had you had in Larry Lillo you had pretty strong director I mean he he

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became eventually Playhouse Theatre director artistic, but he had, of course, he was a Tamilnuse.
He hated, he what? Yeah, he hated, I think he must have hated what he was doing.

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We were terrible. It was the worst piece of shit ever produced by any

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theater company in the Kootenays. You're talking about the food show. Yeah, it was terrible. It was really, really bad.
No less a person than my wife's best friend Eleanor Wachtel,

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was sitting in the audience one night and looked at my wife and said, it's a piece of shit.

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So there you have it from the horse's mouth. Now did Larry Lillow contribute strongly to the
show?

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No, I think mostly he tore his hair.

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Nobody was on task in this.

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There was nothing good to be said about it. It was just a

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bunch of meaningless skits. Yeah, yeah. And it had no point. Yeah, yeah. It didn't have an

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issue. Yeah, yeah. It was, we were just looking for, looking for comedy sketches.

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It might have passed, you know, a collection of the 20 worth skits. That's about where it was. And here's a

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here's a well-known Vancouver director. Yeah. Part of the part of the great

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collective of Tamanous theater you know it sounds like he would have been great.

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Yeah. But I guess he had good material to work with. He had no material to work with.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Nobody would...

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I don't know if anybody else has thought that it was good, but it was.

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Don't let him tell you why, because it wasn't.

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Now the next project seemed to work well.

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That's Project Immigration, which I think you were involved in that too.

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Who got the idea of doing that? Because after all, it's an interesting choice because it wasn't a collective creation of
theater energy,

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it was a borrowed collective creation from Catalyst in Edmonton.

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And in fact, Jan Selman, the director of Catalyst,

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came out and directed the first version, right,

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for Theater Energy.

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Who, who?

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That's right, and she was,

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you know, sometime in there, by the way.

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Well, maybe it was later, maybe it was later.

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Keith, theater sports guy from Johnson

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Johnston Keith Johnson yeah do you do have him in the mix there

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no not really uh he did he came out and worked with us at some point and we did

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oh i think i think that yes actually maybe that was later yeah i knew that

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that's later yeah when the company was really desperate

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they're into serious fundraising, like

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desperate for it, one of their answers

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to raise funds was have theater sports

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nights and of course that's Keith

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Keith Johnston.

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Yeah.

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I've spent, I spent a week, I spent a

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week, day, day long week with, um, days

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long week working with him in Vancouver once.

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Really really good guy at improv my goodness great Mr. Improv. Yeah I

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semi-seriously injured myself being a being a fish. You would do that yeah? Yeah

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you throw yourself up in the air and start slipping and then land on the stage, bam,

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you know, on your head.

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I wouldn't do that.

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No, I did.

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Without a mat anyway.

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I got a good laugh, that's all that counts.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Well, project immaturation seemed to work well

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with only two of the original theater energy people

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remaining, many having burnout.

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BC Cultural Pharmacy.

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Well, Judith was in it.

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I think Kathy was there.

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It must have been Judy and Kathy.

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Or maybe Hank? Was Hank in it?

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I don't have it on this list, but I've got other lists that tell me who was in the show.

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Ruby was. We had to have Ruby because we had to have someone of diverse ethnic...

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I played a Rhodesian racist.

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Yes, I gather.

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Anyway, it worked well. I know for three years it got revived and revived and I think it did very
very well because in a

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way you had a captive audience because you went to schools, right? Schools

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contracted to pay you. Yeah, they paid us and we got funding to develop it. We got a good chunk of funding to develop
it.

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And yeah, yeah.

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And, and out of that, we also did another, uh, school show.

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Um, I think you were lucky to have Jan Selman come and direct you too and her show.

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Yeah.

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Did that work out well with her?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yes. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, she was, she was good and, and we were all behind it and we had fun doing it and
yeah, yeah,

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it was a good show. We must have done, yeah, I don't know how many, but we went as far afield as

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Midway. Oh yeah, yeah.

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That's getting away.

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And Grand Forks,

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into the East Kootenay,

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and probably Golden,

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all over the place.

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Well, at that time,

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Theatre Energy was doing well

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with that one play,

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but also in a state of panic

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and rebuilding,

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as they often were.

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In fact, they appointed Meredith as AD,

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artistic director in 83.

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To what extent was that a new thing for Theater Energy

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to have an artistic director, an official, you're AD?

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Was it helpful?

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I think that was the first.

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That was the first.

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I don't know that it was particularly helpful. I don't know. Yeah.

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She was on, she was halfway out the door by then anyway. Yeah, yeah she was getting gigs.

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She and Brian were heading to Vancouver where she had a pretty good career for a number of
years.

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Bryan Marrion, Bryan Marrion was leaving too?

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You said she and Brian? No, no, no, she and Brian. She and her husband.

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Ron, I think. Ron Woodward. Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, that's right. They went to

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Vancouver and she did, she became an equity actor down there and did pretty well yeah yeah

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yeah work for the Arts Club yeah do you think Jan Selman was good in

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contributing to theater energies methods of working and rehearsing do you think

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she changed theater energy for the good in terms of how they worked Yeah I think that's probably a fair, that's probably
a fair assessment.

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She, I think she added structure to improv. Okay. Where you know you you

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would improv something and it wouldn't just sort of and a path forward to do what, yeah, shaping
and to get at what we wanted our character to get at.

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Right. Speaking of shaping theater, you, Judith, and Ruby got involved pretty soon in something

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called Creating Your Own Theater, a lecture demonstration for high school kids I think. Creating
your

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own theater. You went to high school, the three of you, and gave demo lectures.

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A combination of lecture, demo, and getting the kids to participate, obviously. Now, can you tell
me, you remember that, do you?

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Now that you mention it.

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I guess we did it a few times.

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I think the piece de resistance of it was always when we did Three Fingers Frank.

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Oh yeah, yeah.

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But I guess really really going to schools again

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was almost a guaranteed moneymaker

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because it was like a contract, you know,

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schools had to buy in and agree to pay you so much.

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And there you go, you know.

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Yeah.

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What was the goal?

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Yeah, and in those days there was some funding,

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schools had funding in those days.

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That's right, yeah.

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That dried up.

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When you guys did the workshop, I just have one

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question, what was the goal of the workshop? I mean, far from us getting some money.

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Yeah, well I mean did you give the workshop with the idea that the students,

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just a one, what, two hour session or something, right? Was the workshop with the idea that the
students just a one what two-hour session or something

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right uh was the goal that the students would then be equipped to go out and create their own work

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some sort or or just generally learn uh i don't i i think it was just giving them a taste of what

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theater could be and yeah yeah and you know

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encouraging the ones who had an interest in it and some talent that you know to

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present them with some role models and the show that there was such a thing as

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live theater and how powerful live theater could be. That good. I think that was the goal as much
as anything to show them the validity of live

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theater. Yeah.

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So you could actually just with three people standing up on the stage,

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you could actually be drawn into a world.

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Yup. Of course.

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Which is, yeah, which is pretty, pretty amazing and it's,

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it's what obviously... Did you receive, did you receive good feedback on

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the workshops, you know, when they were finished? Did you get... Yeah, I think so.

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Yeah, I think so. I have, my memory of it is, we didn't do a lot of that. Oh, no.

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Okay.

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There must have been not a huge number of shows, but.

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Right.

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I could move on now to the tomorrow box

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that you were involved in.

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The tomorrow box.

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What year was that?

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I've got March 83.

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That sounds about right, yeah.

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Meredith is A.D.

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John Cooper from Vancouver comes up and directs.

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And again...

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Yeah, the guy who referred to the audience as the fans.

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I love him.

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And you're seeing now...

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How is John? Is he still around?

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I think he is, as far as I know. I

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haven't heard anything for a long time but I assume. Yeah he had a

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pretty good career as a director. Yeah that's right he did. Yeah now you're

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getting more again getting more focused on available scripts like Immigration

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under Milkwits, Three Penny Opera, now the Tomorrow Box,

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another known published script, and Chislett in Victoria.

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Yeah, but we, you know, I mean, we sort of tried

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to present it as a regional piece,

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because it was written in Alberta, I think.

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And we set it in Creston. That's right, Yeah so a bit of a change there yeah. Yeah yeah and we had
a

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good a good tour we had a kind of an interesting set. Howard Barham did the

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set and the lighting for that. Yeah good good. And it was a trailer kind of set on stage and I have a
note

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that around this time you were paid $210 a week really you were paid at least the

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others were the others were don't know What? No one told you, eh? Oh dear.

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No, no, that sounds right.

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Two ten a week sounds about right.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Which, you know, I mean that was kind of the least of it in a way because then you could

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parlay that into EI for the rest of the year.

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Yeah, yeah. So certainly the

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collective now is not working at creating a play. No. And you know

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you're doing scripts you know like a more old-fashioned or conventional

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theatre group but I think, I think. Yeah and that's what we had become. Yeah I

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think Tomorrow Box did well.

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As far as I can see it had a good reception, good reviews, and do you feel it was a good production?

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Yeah, it was. My abiding memory of that was we were driving to do a show in Salmon Arm and

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we'd gotten off the Galena Ferry

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and we're zooming along the highway up towards Revelstoke when the van hit a patch of ice and

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flipped and ended up in the ditch on its side.

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And guess who was the only idiot not wearing a seatbelt at the time?

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Richard.

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That was me.

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Richard, somebody.

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Richard the idiot.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And I ended up with my forehead being ground

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into shattered glass at the bottom of the van.

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So I had a, it was superficial but it was definitely,

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we had to go to the hospital and be bandaged up.

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And the show went on that night, we had to write a line in saying Joe what happened

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and I would explain how I oh yeah I had this accident didn't try to didn't try

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to hide it yeah oh you couldn't hide it it's huge bandage on my forehead yeah

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yeah and the the funny part was act Two is one year later.

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And Joe, did you do it again?

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The audience of course got the joke,

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because there was no way relevant

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to the action of the play.

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Right, right.

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Yeah, it was of the play. Right, right. Now, I have to note here that the 82-83 season, which

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included Tomorrow Box, ended with a deficit of $6,000 and a feeling that the collective approach
to the administration and decision making had outlived its usefulness.

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I'm quoting here a season report from Theater Energy.

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The deficit of $6,000 and the feeling

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that the collective approach to administration

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and decision making had outlived its usefulness, unquote.

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I'm not even sure, what is the deficit of $6,000 mean? I mean, we owed $6,000?

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Is that what it means?

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Yeah, it means you're in debt.

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Well who did we owe it to?

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Oh God, well various places I guess, I don't know.

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I don't either.

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I'm not sure who we owed it to. Yeah, I'm not

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sure either. That detail I don't get from the reports, you know, the year-end

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reports from Theatre Energy. Or is it that we were supposed to pay ourselves so much money

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and we didn't at the end of the day pay ourselves all that much money because

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we didn't have it.

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I think that was what it was. I don't think we actually owed anybody

19



250
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anything except of course the actors. Well that was a really good question and

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you may be totally right I'll have to look into that. Yeah, I ended up becoming artistic director
for a better word.

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That's my next comment, my next note. Yeah, 1984 maybe?

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Yeah and I have no memory of actually owing anybody anything.

254
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No, no. Well...

255
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So I think that's what it was.

256
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Yep. And the first show, well, 84, so 84 you

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became AD. I've got a note here, the first show of the 83-84 season was

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Mind Tailings, which is not really a theatre energy show, but I have seen it

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called a Co-Pro, and I'm not sure about that with it with the summer the summer

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company players yeah we did it hey yeah summer company well but there was a Hank

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rubber Hank Ruby and Celeste or Celeste Gina yeah they did it up in they did it

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up in yeah up in Denver that's right. The art gallery there is a so-called summer company

20



263
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players. And yeah, I don't think it was a co-pro though with Theater Energy.

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I don't even think it was real. That was just, that was just words. Yeah. I mean,

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they were doing their, their own thing. Yeah. Well, they just, it when is boiler room suite oh it's it's

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00:21:07.140 --> 00:21:15.299
yeah it's 83 yeah 1983 yeah it comes in a falling I think yeah yeah anyway the

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summer the summer company thing that was something that they did and I guess they

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called or they it was put put down as theater energy because

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that was useful for purposes of fundraising to say that we had done that.

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But you know those three guys wrote it, did it, and it had really nothing to do with anything.

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That's Mind Tailings, right? Yeah, Mind Tailings, yeah.

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Whereas Boiler Room Suite was a theatre energy show directed by Meredith. It had

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you, Judith and Duncan Fraser in it. Yeah. A pretty well-known actor in

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Vancouver. They seemed to get really good reviews and comments. How was your

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experience working with someone like Duncan, a highly experienced award winning actor or yada yada? How did you?

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21



I enjoyed working with him and learning from him and he told me at the end that he thought

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I was a really good actor and I should come to Vancouver. That was nice.

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So you dropped everything? Yeah right. Actually I did end up going to Vancouver not that long
after but not to act.

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Another story yeah. Okay yeah yeah. Well Boiler Room Suite worked well that's good.

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I wonder... Yeah we played to a big house in Trail at the

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big theater in Trail and other than that I guess we just played it at

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the Civic. That was our venue in those days. Yeah the Civic

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Theater and that's a big venue you get a lot of people in there. Yeah. Yeah, you could.

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Yeah.

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I wonder, I had some, just a thought,

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but I just said, when I think about Weller and Mesuite,

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what I know of it, and what was going on with Theater Energy

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at the time, when they were really

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questioning their existence, and who are we,

22



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what are we doing.

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I wonder, Weller and Mesuite features, what,

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a fading actor, actress, and kind of a

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fading poet? And I wonder, you know, what

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did, I wonder if that was kind of somewhat

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autobiographical for theater energy, you

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know, that kind of...

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It might just might have appealed to

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them. It might just read something into

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them. On the other hand, it,

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on the other hand hand it might have been who we had available. I don't even know how Duncan
got brought into it.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah there he was. I don't even know how that happened. Yep, yep.

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But yeah, he was a fine fellow. Yep. We had a good time.

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303
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No, no, back to 1983, we're still there. Yeah. I'm interested in this. There was a

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gala reception at the Lord Nelson Hotel for local people interested in culture in

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Nelson where it was announced it was announced that Theatre Energy along with

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the Film Society and the Nelson Little Theatre will become resident companies

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at the Capitol Theatre when opened. Of course that never happened but I'd like

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to know the background to this. Who, did Theatre Energy promote this?

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Was Theatre Energy invited to this event at the Lord Nelson?

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Yeah, we were invited and that was one of the grand plans that,

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because at that time the big thing was to try to get heritage funding to revive

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the Capitol theater and make it into a theater.

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Of course the problem with that was that it was a movie theater and the funding

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was heritage funding.

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So you had to reproduce it. Yeah, but you must have...

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24



Capital theater, instead of being a decent theater, a venue for live theater,

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has always been just a hallway with a platform at the end. Yeah, now you, but

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however, having said that, you must have thought, and Theater Energy too, you must

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00:25:44.359 --> 00:25:49.160
have thought at one time it was a good idea because I gather you spoke up at that

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meeting for theater energy and promoted the idea of being a resident company

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there. Yeah actually absolutely and I worked on that I worked on that idea of

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trying to do you know summer theater or resident company for a number of

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years there. Nobody ever listened to me or any of us who were knowledgeable

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about theater about redesigning the space. Yeah. So we were always stuck with

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00:26:22.319 --> 00:26:26.240
those golden arches. Yeah, yeah. And this

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flat proscenium stage with no truss. However, I have done innumerable plays on

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that stage and, you know, it works. But that, when I was in

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Vancouver, so it was 86, 87, 88 was when they, yeah, they put out a call for someone to be the
manager, it wasn't artistic director,

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but sort of the head person of the Capitol Theatre when it was up and running.

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330
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And there were, I went and applied for the job and that was my vision.

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Let's, you know, let's

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make

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Nelson a theater town. Let's have this theater be the crown jewel of it and let's do summer theater.

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But the alternate version or vision was

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what won out and that was just to every year since, for the last seven or eight centuries, they've
done summer musicals

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there.

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And not only do they do summer musicals there, they rehearse in the space for the first three

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00:28:23.880 --> 00:28:28.220
weeks of July, then they put on the

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play for the next week of July, then they clean up after it, and then they shut it

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down. Oh so just... And that's what the crown jewel of theatre in this little

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arts town, the best little arts town in Canada, Done. So that tells you everything you need to know
about theater savviness in Melton.

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00:28:53.000 --> 00:29:07.119
Right, too bad. Now, when, after you gave your talk at the hotel about theater, and she being a

26



resident theater company, now it didn't work clearly and it died, you know, it didn't happen.

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Did it die? Did the idea die because of theater energy losing interest or saying no we can't work

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there? Or did or what? No, no it died because the people, the funding, that it was all about
recreating this movie theater and doing community shows and renting it out.

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Well that wasn't your job.

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And there was no funding.

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This was in the dark days of the liberals, right?

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00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:50.279
So you're saying that the theater just wasn't gonna work.

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It was too slow getting on its legs, getting funding,

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00:29:53.859 --> 00:29:58.859
completing, finishing up, and who would wanna work there?

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You couldn't work there.

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Well, you needed a buy-in, a huge buy-in from, well how did

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Stratford get going? They had a huge buy-in from the province and from the

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00:30:13.759 --> 00:30:20.839
local community and there was no buy-in from Nelson. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay so...

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00:30:20.839 --> 00:30:25.519
None at all. Yeah, well, I mean it did get finished eventually and

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356
00:30:25.519 --> 00:30:30.000
they did put shows in there but it took a long time didn't it? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

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00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:38.599
It got finished because it got huge heritage money.

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It was some centennial, wasn't it? 85 was the centennial or something? Yeah huge amounts of
money

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00:30:45.720 --> 00:30:52.039
from the federal government, from it was a sweetheart project, but it was all

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about the building. Yeah did you know why? There was no money for actual, for

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00:30:57.920 --> 00:31:03.279
actually doing anything. Did you know? It was constantly focused on fundraising

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which is why it got into the community

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show. They make tons of money out of it. They charge those kids to come and be in the show and then they also
charged people

28



file:///Q/Digitization/vol04/Vault_Transcriptions/Theatre%20Energy/RichardRowberry_02_transcript.vtt