Hello dear friend,

And suddenly, Autumn.

When I was walking my boy home from school the other day, he said something that hit me quite deeply about this time of year; he said, “Fall isn’t really a season, daddy, it’s just a time between hot and cold, in-between the only two real seasons, summer and winter.”

Children sometimes have this incredible way of framing things that, if you’re prone to self-analysis and love a good metaphor, really hit you in the feels.

A fleeting, transitional time between hot and cold…

That’s very much where I feel Life is right now for me, personally as an artist, and for SIR as well, our mighty little shop that keeps on chugging along.

I have just returned from a trip to Stratford, Ontario, where I was rehearsing our re-imagined remounting of the 2023 production of PANDORA, by Jessica B. Hill. Remember that one?! Delightfully, it’s been produced by Stratford’s new contemporary plays festival, Here For Now Theatre. So SIR is, as per tradition every Fall, “on tour” again this year, and playing in Stratford between November 05 – 14. If you find yourself in Southern Ontario, you should definitely go re-live the magical design by Winnipeg’s extraordinary visual artist jaymez.

Speaking of travels; like Fall, airports are also a sort of “in-between” place. I must say, I found myself doing a lot of “transitional” thinking during my visit to Stratford, while re-rehearsing Pandora and seeing old friends in a town I once called Home; and I specially did some serious contemplation at airports on my journey back. There are many changes ahead, and the moment begs reflection.

Adam Jennings, SIR’s new Managing Director, begins work this Monday, October 20. Adam and I go way back, back 20 years – when we met studying at the U of W and putting on Fringe plays together as the romantic, passionate young artists we were (are…?). And suddenly, here we are, reunited in mid-age, as the co-leadership of SIR. I am so excited to re-meet Adam in this new context, and to work alongside him to make sure we continue to give YOU a great, great time out at the park every Spring (ha, there’s another ‘in-between’ season) and into the resolute Summer. He’s going to be so good for SIR.

Transitions are exciting, vital, but they are also nebulous by nature. When I was a kid, whenever things felt uncertain in life, Dad used to bring up that old riddle “how far into the woods can a lost dog go?” The answer is half-way, because after that he’ll be technically coming out of the woods and into the clear. So yes, the only way through, is through. We just need to keep on going; rocking on; moving along; and as Pozzo repeatedly exclaims in Waiting for Godot when times get tough, “we wait till we can get up, and then we go on, on…”

Theatre itself is a transitional, liminal, in-between realm – both in form and as a practice; a brief suspension from “real life”; a feverish dream that actors and creatives assemble during a compressed amount of time with dedication, purpose and a bit of poetry; we then unleash that process into a sort of public conversation with an audience, and then one day, we simply decide to do it all one last time, and never again. The curtain comes down. The show closes. Things end.

And it feels…heartbreaking. “Is that it?!” All that work and deep, intimate connection between artists…*poof*…In the biz, we often talk about “post show blues”, that sort of period after closing when everyone involved in the production feels like they’re coming out of a daze…re-calibrating their senses back into the real world; no more conversations with an audience – until the next show of course; but when is that?!

For a couple of years now, I’ve been plotting a sort of “after care” program with SIR’s friend and local therapist/performance coach Scott Erickson. The idea being that in a series of guided conversations before, during and after a production, members of the creative team would get a chance to discuss their work with a professional coach, and thereby digest the phases of the creative process with emotional support, rigour and insight – and be able to then let it all go in a more organic, articulate and fulfilling way.

We are still in the piloting/dreaming phase of this idea, but more and more, given how emotionally unstable, immature and completely unfocused the world feels daily, I’m thinking this type of artistic program is more needed than ever.

Artists become attached to their craft; as actor Ethan Hawke once said, we pour our very sense of self-worth into our work, only to lose it all at the end; because Theatre – ever the urgent mirror to the very nature of being alive – is poetically ephemeral. It’s here, and then it’s gone. How precious.

Speaking of being wonderfully precious, I’d like to thank three very special humans who kept SIR moving forward during the absence of a Managing Director in the last few months, and into the process of hiring Adam, they are: Joanne Zuk, Jennifer Chan, and Katrina Dunn. These tenacious, highly skilled and insightful Board Members worked incredibly hard, kept SIR financially stable, supported my artistic impulses, and brilliantly set the company up for future success – I am everlastingly grateful.

I’m truly excited about the future of SIR. This Fall, we will embark on a new strategic planning process that will shape the next five years of the company; we will set Adam up to bloom into the community leader we know his charisma can fuel; we will fundraise and nurture relationships; we will begin casting and designing our two 2026 Ruins productions (get ready for laughs, music, love, poetic melancholy, lovers, letters, shepherds, soldiers, forests, battlefields, war and peace…) – we will work hard and energetically for YOU. This is your Shakespearean company.

Yes, Theatre is ephemeral, and we are in the business of memory-making; of experience, not product. I cannot think of a more open, hopeful, and generous and wholehearted way of living and making a living. It is by embracing the transitory cycles of artmaking and growing into maturity that we make ourselves available for transformation. Poet and philosopher David Whyte – a constant presence in my reading life – defines that vital transformation as the very essence of heartbreak:

“Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity; in a love relationship, in a life’s work…in an attempt to shape a better and more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and an emblem of care. Heartbreak is how we mature, yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.”

The journey from here to there…the Fallen leaves of Autumn transitioning us into a new season.

Adam and I started our theatrical journeys in school together, and then we didn’t cross paths again for 20 years. And here we are now, a little more mature, a little wiser; transformed.

The readiness is all.

 

May you relish every heartbreak in life, dear friend!

Love,

Rodrigo