An interview with Aaron Craven of Mitch and Murray Productions (theatre)

I met Aaron Craven, not surprisingly, through my blog. He is the mastermind behind Mitch and Murray Productions, a Vancouver theatre company that is getting started in this 2011. I wanted to know more about their fundraising campaign and their goals, so I sent him some interview questions. Thank you Aaron for agreeing to answer my questions!

1.- What exactly drives you to start a theatre company in this economic climate?

The famous acting coach Stella Adler said, “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one”. I think we are reaching a point of critical mass in western culture. It feels like we are on the tail end of what could be called the boom times and we stand to be the first generation since the depression whose standard of living is lower than our parents. Couple that with a rapid influx of technology (texting, email, Facebook, Twitter) that gives us a false sense of connection, and it feels like there is a sense of overall disconnect with my generation, a sort of social malaise. It has always been at times like this when the best art has been created, when society is crying out for a change of pace, or a reconnection to something basic and human. Theatre is the most pure and traditional form of storytelling and it has survived all manner of upheaval since the times of the Greek theatre. Contrary to the notion that theatre is dying, I think the times we live in are a perfect opportunity for theatre to have a renaissance. It feels like people are craving a sense of communal participation, and there is no better and quicker way to get that drug injected into your veins than by going to the theatre.

2.- Tell me a bit about your background and how your company started?

I’ve been producing theatre ever since I graduated from UBC in the late 90′s. I’ve been lucky enough to have relatively steady employment as an actor in the Film/TV industry, both here and in Los Angeles. However, what I came to slowly realize was that the real actor’s medium is the theatre. I also realized that there is zero money in theatre, so I adopted the mentality that I would do Film/TV for financial reasons (and occasionally, artistic fulfillment) and I would produce my own theatre from material that inspired me, and with peers who I was jazzed to work with. It’s worked out fairly well. A friend and I produced a short play festival for several years, called “The Actors’ Jam” and the first play under the production banner of Mitch and Murray Productions was the Vancouver Premiere of Neil Labute’s “Fat Pig” at Performance Works. We were nominated for three Jessies in 2010 and attracted the type of audience that theatre in this city needs to cultivate more, a young audience under the age of 40 who are looking for some gritty, unsafe and challenging theatre that speaks to themes of our generation. That is the mandate of our company, to attract a younger, edgier audience that quite frankly doesn’t seem to have theatre on the entertainment radar, in this city at least.

3.- What is the story behind the name of your company?

Mitch and Murray are the names of two characters in the play “Glengarry Glen Ross”, by David Mamet, one of my favorite plays. They are spoken about throughout the play but never actually appear on stage, sort of like Godot in Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot”. They’re the unseen puppet masters of all these salesmen’s fates in the story. That’s how I look at storytelling – if you are doing it well, you are guiding the audience through an experience but you are doing it in a way whereby they don’t see the acting, the directing, the lighting – they simply get swept up in the story without thinking about the mechanics or the people behind it. The machinations of theatre remain unseen.

4.- What kind of stories does your company intend to tell? What kind of questions do your performances explore?

Well, the other reason for the company name is that Mamet represents the type of storytelling that I adore, as do playwrights like Neil Labute, Michael Weller, Tracy Letts and Canada’s own Jason Sherman. Razor sharp dialogue, economical storytelling and character driven narratives that leave an unclear moral message with the audience and present them with ambiguous characters. I love stories that don’t manipulate an audience into liking or not liking the characters, but rather present people who are human in all of the forms that that entails. If you are truly to represent the human experience, then you have to explore the darker, selfish, prejudiced nature of humanity as well, otherwise you’re not painting the whole picture. That’s where movies have led us down the garden path of formula for the most part, while theatre doesn’t have the same economic stakes, so is able to operate more in the grey zone, as it were.

5.- What makes your company unique vis-a-vis other small theatre companies?

Well, I think because of the lack of venues for live performance in Vancouver, there are two types of theatre in the city. The Arts Club, The Playhouse, Bard on the Beach have their own venues and so are able to do theatre on a large scale, and are responsible for a fairly broad audience base, including lots of affluent, older audience members. The smaller companies that are successful tend to do site-specific, avant garde work, which is fantastic but appeals to a very creative niche audience looking for that sort of experience. We’re shooting for the middle ground, doing contemporary, challenging and topical plays and trying to reach an urban, twenty to fortysomething audience who are sitting around bars and restaurants in Vancouver, nursing their fifth martini, and are bored senseless, talking about how there’s nothing to do in Vancouver. We want to wake them the hell up and get them in to see our shows.

Quite frankly, artists do not always have the best business acumen – we’re trained to nurture our souls and be creative, but that means little to those outside the craft and is not what gets the bums in seats. Your average audience member either wants to disengage through escapism or wants to deeply engage in something that is going to rock them somewhat, and get the hands dirty, so to speak. You have to make your mandate clear and you have to guide them to your work and make your message entertaining, visible and arresting. Most importantly, you have to keep repeating the message until it sinks in, which most small companies don’t have the budget to do. Our company is forging an online presence and we’re partnering with local businesses to not only sponsor us financially, but also through cross pollination, promoting each other’s product. We just received a $500 sponsorship for our upcoming show at the Cultch this fall and have partnered with that restaurant, “Sorry Babushka” on Commercial Drive, to help them build their clientele through our web presence and they’re doing the same for us. To make theatre visible in this city, you have to partner up with other businesses and get your message out there in a creative and entertaining way. There are ways to do that within a small budget and we’re finding those ways.

6.- What are the plans for your fundraising? How is it going so far?

Fundraising is damn tough, but we’re doing fairly well. We’re producing the Vancouver premiere of Michael Weller’s “Fifty Words” this fall at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Currently, we’re holding an online fundraiser on this site – INDIEGOGO . As incentive for people to contribute, we are partnering with businesses to donate prize draws for our funders. To date we’ve raised over $1700 and have until July 25th to reach our fundraising goal of $3000 online. We are also having a fundraiser at the Pal Theatre on August 6th, in conjunction with The Shameless Hussies theatre company. We’re going to have an improv show, some local musicians and some sexy 50/50 sellers parading around the party.

We’re also selling ad space on our website, playbills and press materials to local businesses. Not only will those businesses receive the ad space, but we include their updates on our email sendouts, Facebook posts, Twitter, etc, again with the idea of cross pollination and a win/win for both parties.

Public arts funding cuts are very difficult, but we’re hoping that at least one of our federal and provincial grant applications will be successful. If not, we’ll have to really buckle down and find the money for the show. Either way, we’re getting it done.

7.- Tell me about your upcoming play.

October 25th – November 25th at The Vancouver East Cultural Centre, we’re staging the Vancouver premiere of Michael Weller’s “Fifty Words”. The play explores one roller coaster of an evening between a married couple, Jan and Adam. Their young son is at his first sleepover and so they are alone together for the first time in years. What starts as seduction derails into a night of emotional upheaval and unexpected discovery. It is an unrelenting look at the nature of relationships and how people change with each other over time. Who can’t relate to that one?

Jessie award winner John Murphy is directing, the lovely Kirsten Robek is playing Jan and I’m playing Adam. It is, frankly, a terrifying undertaking, as the characters go to the extremes of emotional unrest. At a glance, I can see how this would be viewed as a vanity piece, a chance for two actors to get on stage and get their ya ya’s out, wanking on the whole experience, as we actors call it. However, we’ve carefully crafted a concept for the play which is designed for a unique audience experience. The concept is hyper-realism – every set piece, prop, light, sound cue, all of it will be non-theatrical and a working set piece. So, the cooking and the smells will be real, the phone ringing will be real, the lights and set will be functional and operational only by the characters. Set in the intimate confines of the Vancity Culture Lab at the Cultch, the audience will surround the playing area and be very close to the action, so will feel like they are sitting on the edge of this couple’s living room, watching this crazy evening unfold. This is the experience that theatre can create and that cinema cannot.

In order to pull this off, we need to have a proper budget in place, so we are humbly encouraging interested people to contribute on our site. Just a $5 contribution gets you automatically entered in our prize draws, gets you listed as a funder on the site and makes a world of difference to our company. In order for live entertainment in small spaces to remain exciting and viable, and for the artists to make a token amount of money for their efforts, supplementary funding is always needed. We like to think of it as investing in something exciting that will provide a great entertainment option not only in terms of this show, but in the city’s cultural future. I’ll bookend this interview with another quote, as others can say it far better than I:

“I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.” (Laurence Olivier)

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