Check In From Away Episode 29

AUDIO	VIDEO	
STEFFI D: Hi, everyone. I'm Steffi D. 	Steffi and Lisa appear in different chat windows on screen	
LISA H: And I'm Lisa H. 		
STEFFI D: And welcome to Check In From Away. 		
LISA H: This week, we are checking in with the cast and creative team of Alice in Wonderland. 		
STEFFI D: Thanks for joining us. 		
[THEME MUSIC] 	CREDITS SEQUENCE
TEXT: Check In From Away with Steffi D. and Lisa H.
Steffi and Lisa’s windows slide together and they mime clinking their mugs together.	
		
LISA H: Hey, Steffi, guess what? 		
STEFFI D: Wait a minute, Lisa. That's my line. 		
LISA H: I couldn't help myself because, Steffi, I have been spending the last month working on a show where I'm asking all the questions. 		
STEFFI D: Lisa, ask me again. 		
LISA H: Hey Steffi, guess what? 		
STEFFI D: What? LISA H: I have been stage managing a new musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. 		
[MUSIC PLAYING] 	IMAGE: Soulpepper logo	
	Footage of people in rehearsal for Alice In Wonderland	
	IMAGE: Bad Hats logo	
Lisa, theater in a pandemic? Tell me more. Give me more details about the production. 		
LISA H: OK, it is a new musical adaptation of the classic Alice in Wonderland, created and masterminded by Bad Hats Theater Company in association with Soulpepper, and it will be available for the whole month of April to be streamed into your home. 		
STEFFI D: Lisa, I can't wait to watch it. And today, we're going to be talking to the cast and creative team. 		
LISA H: That's right, here we go. 		
STEFFI D: Here we go. Let's go down the rabbit hole, Lisa. 		
FIONA SAUDER: My name is Fiona Sauder, I am the co-founder and artistic director of Bad Hats Theater. I'm also the playwright of Alice in Wonderland, or the book writer for Alice, and I am in the show. I play Tweedledee, I play the March Hare, and a score of other characters. And it's a joy. 	TEXT ON SCREEN: Fiona Saunder – Artistsic Director – Bad Hats Theatre- Playwright/Actor/Musician	
LANDON DOAK: Hi. We're rolling. I'm Landon. I am one half of the music of Bad Hats Theater's production of Alice in Wonderland, and I've been on the project since its inception three years ago? 	TEXT ON SCREEN: Victor Pokinki – Executive Producer – Bad Hats Theatre – Co-composer

Landon Doak – Associate Producer – Bad Hats Theatre – Co-composer/Actor/Musician	
VICTOR POKINKO: Three years ago, yeah. 		
LANDON DOAK: Three years ago. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: Yeah, and you're also the associate artist at Bad Hats. 		
LANDON DOAK: I am. And I play Tweedledum in the show, and The Mad Hatter. 		
STEFFI D: Oh. 		
LANDON DOAK: Yeah, that's what I do. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: And I'm Victor. I am the producer of the show. I'm also the other half of the music of Bad Hats Theater's Alice in Wonderland. And I'm the executive producer of Bad Hats Theater, the company itself. 		
RICHARD LAM: Hi, I'm Richard Lam. I'm an actor and musician in Alice in Wonderland, and I've been with the show since the very first workshop. 	TEXT ON SCREEN: Richard Lam – Actor/Musician	
LISA H: Amazing. Richard, so happy to have you here, and we were just commenting before we started rolling camera, this was the first time you've actually seen me. So this face is in real life. Real life. 		
RICHARD LAM: We've been working together for almost a month and I literally have never seen what your face looks like. There's two answers to that for me. And half of it is like just Alice in Wonderland by itself, which is that I do feel like there's been so much stress and pressure and anxiety in the world. That Alice in Wonderland, what I've been taking away from it right now, is this opportunity to sit, and not knowing stuff. And it has been really enriching in my life in that way, that it's like, oh, this is literally a whole show where I just get to explore the concept of not knowing, and liking that, and that being a beautiful thing. 		
And then at the same time, the other half for me is that Bad Hats Theater specifically, are like-- I love them, I consider them like my family. And the way that they make theater is so communal and joyous, and really, it's like everything that the theater does so well that Netflix will never do, that YouTube will never do. Like Bad Hats, that's their whole style. They embrace that so hard. And so for me, returning to a Bad Hats show is like just a celebration of what the theater is, completely. Yeah. 		
FIONA SAUDER: I sort of recognized Alice in Wonderland, and what I thought would be really interesting to do with Alice in Wonderland was to not ignore the fact that Peter Pan had come first. This show is completely-- you know, stands alone and if you haven't seen Peter Pan, it's not a reference to that. But for me, having worked co-adapting Peter Pan and then doing this one, I really do like to think of them as in that order. Because for me, Peter Pan was this story all about that moment where you decide whether or not you're going to take part in society as an adult person who's going to grow up. Whether you are or you aren't. 		
Basically, it was a big conversation around what is childhood, and what's it for, and where does it go when we leave it behind. And so then Alice, to me, is really all about once you've made that decision to grow up, and it's about this age where we're all really peeking out of childhood into adulthood. And yeah, how to basically-- Peter Pan is like should I, should I not grow up? Alice is, and how do I do that? 		
VICTOR POKINKO: We were on tour with another show in 2017, me and Matt Pilipiak, who is in the show and who's the managing artistic producer at Bad Hats. And Fiona was on tour with us as well doing a show called Three Men in a Boat, and we were literally like, maybe you should do Wonderland. We were driving and we drove by-- and we literally drove by, I think it's in Wonderland Avenue, and we were like, oh. And then we found a book of Peter Pan with Alice in Wonderland on the other side. And then we started seeing white rabbits everywhere. Like, the universe was kind of like, here you go, come to this play. So part of it is intellectual, but I also-- 		
LANDON DOAK: We didn't choose it-- 		
VICTOR POKINKO: It chose us. 		
[MUSIC]	TEXT ON SCREEN: What’s Your favourite Knowledge?	
LANDON DOAK: In the Tweedledee Tweedledum song, Tweedledee and Tweedledum ask Alice in Wonderland what is her favorite knowledge. And that's how they phrase it, "what's your favorite knowledge?" And so she lays this fact on to them that I brought to the show, that it seems like no one knew this fact before. And it is, did you know that when caterpillars turned into a cocoon inside, they're full of goo? 		
That a caterpillar makes a cocoon, and it's not like the caterpillar just grows wings and becomes a butterfly, it decomposes into a primordial goo. So if you break open a cocoon, it's just liquid like honey, and then from that primordial goo, they reform into a butterfly. A lot of people think of caterpillar just kind of grows wings and changes like a Pokemon evolves, and it's not the case. Cocoons are full of goo. 		
STEFFI D: What? 		
FIONA SAUDER: The first ingredient in plum sauce is pumpkins. 		
[GIGGLES] 		
STEFFI D: Seriously? 		
FIONA SAUDER: Apparently. 		
STEFFI D: Why? 		
FIONA SAUDER: Well, if you think about it, next time you have plum sauce and you taste it and you're like, there's pumpkin in this, you'll understand. 		
STEFFI D: Wait, I've never said that before. I never had plum sauce and gone, there's pumpkin in this. 		
FIONA SAUDER: But I'm saying if you told yourself. You know, you can drink like a chocolate strawberry shake and if you go, it's strawberry, it tastes like strawberry. You go, it's chocolate, it tastes like chocolate. I don't know if you've done this. I spent a lot of time experimenting with-- meditating with foods and-- no I don't. 		
STEFFI D: You know what, I'm going to try it out tonight. 		
LISA H: Because also, plum sauce is more the color of pumpkins than it is the color of plums. 		
FIONA SAUDER: That's what I'm saying. 		
STEFFI D: But plum flesh is kind of that yellowy-- 		
FIONA SAUDER: You know, here's the thing about my fact. As someone told me this, I think in grade 9, and I've been carrying it around like a fact for years, and I don't know-- I've never looked it up. 		
[LAUGHTER] 		
STEFFI D: We don't know. 		
FIONA SAUDER: --is, the first ingredient in plum sauce maybe pumpkins. But we'll never know. 		
STEFFI D: I kind of love that even more than actually knowing for sure. So bless you. I love it. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: Hippopotamuses can run preposterously fast. I don't know if you know this. They can run something like-- I think it's between 45 and 60 kilometers an hour. For reference, we can bike 30 kilometers an hour. Like these things, on their little stuff, they all just go and they like run and can fully eat you no matter where you are. So stay away from them. 		
[LAUGHTER] 		
STEFFI D: They can hear you can no matter where you are. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: No matter where you are. Like they can literally see you go "roar." There almost as fast as like a cheetah, like come on. 		
LANDON DOAK: Yeah, they're really fast. And if you're caught between a body of water and a hippo, you're just done. It's game over. They're very vicious. They seem like sweet sort of slow creatures, and they're not. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: They're really mad. 		
STEFFI D: --the song, the Christmas song, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" is-- 		
VICTOR POKINKO: Because she's a sociopath. 		
LANDON DOAK: She's-- I think she's just uninformed. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: Or maybe that. 		
LANDON DOAK: She doesn't know what she's saying. 		
[MUSIC - GAYLA PEEVES, "I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS"] 	Footage of Gayla Peeves singing	
(SINGING) I want a hippopotamus for Christmas, only a hippopotamus will do. No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses, I only like hippopotamuses, and hippopotamuses like me too. 		
RICHARD LAM: I use this all the time-- well, back in the day when we used to be in real conversations talking with people, which is that like apparently, when there's a lull in conversation, it's a natural evolutionary response that we evolve to look for predators, as animals. Like when there's a lull in conversation-- if you've been in a conversation too long there's a lull, it's like, OK, now everyone look around, is there a cougar? But then when there's a lull in conversation, that's where else I usually say that, and it like breaks the ice. 		
STEFFI D: Hey, have you ever used that fun fact on a first date? 		
RICHARD LAM: Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. 		
STEFFI D: I was going to say like that's the perfect thing to say when there is a lull in a conversation on a date. 		
RICHARD LAM: Yeah, it makes you look very-- like a great conversationalist. 		
[MUSIC]	TEXT ON SCREEN: The Importance of Theatre	
FIONA SAUDER: We talk a lot about how it's about-- that all our work sort of tries to be offerings on how to live a bit better. And that's based on our limited expertise of being alive together, and the lives of the people who come into the fold of their company. And I think that we all need to-- we all need instruction manuals, and we all need times to sit with different stories, and different ways of thought, and different types of realities, in order to become better. 		
And so I feel like theater will always be about coming together, sharing things, and trying to improve. It's meant to challenge all of us working on it and witnessing it. And I think that there's so much that's happening in the world, there's so many reckonings going on, and there will continue to be, because there's so many of us, and there's so many flaws, and there's so much to contend with. I just think we need help. We all need help to be alive, and to be good at it. And to care better. 		
So I think that's what theater's for. And we need joy. So it does all those things. And if you're not going to the theater, what are you doing? What are you doing? 		
LANDON DOAK: What theater provides is that sense of like kids and parents and everyone alike just buying into magic. in a way that with film you can pause it and have your popcorn, or you can watch it later, the next day, this is something that's happening now and it's finishing now. And whether you buy into it or enjoy it or not is entirely up to you, and I think that it's almost educational to be able to say like, this is yours too, and never stop imagining, never stop dreaming in your real life. 		
RICHARD LAM: Like I said, it does things that Netflix doesn't. And I think it's this-- theater is important for the same reason that a Zoom birthday's not like a normal birthday. When you communicate with someone on the internet, you send information, but you don't sound your energy. And we need that. We need to give it out and receive it in kind of a cycle. 		
The energy of being around people, witnessing the same thing, people are never going to not need that, no matter how advanced our technology gets. I really do think we're a very far distance from being able to truly replicate that. And so there will always be a place for us to gather, and share stories, and hear music. 		
Music, that is real, and by that, I mean like the air vibrates in the actual room between the instruments, and the wood, and the vocal chords. Like that's different than a speaker system. And it's just fundamentally a totally different thing. It hits you differently. And there will always be a place for that too, I believe. 		
[MUSIC]	TEXT ON SCREEN: Curiouser and Curiouser	
LISA H: What are you most curious about? 		
FIONA SAUDER: Ouch, my brain, just you asking that question. Everything. If I could just live in other people's brains for a while, that would be it. Yeah, I want to know how thought patterns work in people's heads. I feel like it's this unknowable thing. We can't brain swap. There's films where they pretend that-- I don't know if you've seen-- anyway, that's a whole other tangent. But like yeah, we just can't feel what each other feel. 		
So I feel like that's so much of what theater is about. It's like discovering ways to hold in one space, a mutually felt feeling, or discovery, or whatever that is. And I just feel like all of what we do in our sector is about trying to feel together, because it's something we can never do. So I'm just curious about how everyone else thinks. So I only have one-- I only get to do it this way, for my whole life. 		
STEFFI D: That's so true. 		
LISA H: So smart. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: I am curious about how we, as a species, kind of like-- how interact with the universe in terms of like, are we doing what we're supposed to do purpose wise, and is there-- I don't believe in a deeper purpose, but I guess what I mean is, if an alien civilization was watching us, would they think we were stupid, or would they think we were kind of cool? That's what I'm curious about right now. 		
STEFFI D: Oh. 		
LANDON DOAK: I like to call it-- I'm always curious what's somebody's best guess. Instead of saying like, what do you believe, or what's your religion or spirituality, I go like, what's your best guess about like everything? So I'm just really curious about what the heck is going on, and why we're all here, and why we all care so much, and we're all going to die someday. And I think people forget that, and what's it all for, if anything? And is there a conscious life after death of some kind? That. 		
RICHARD LAM: I'm just curious about-- I mean, kind of like the topic of the day, but like how are we going to make theater again? And what's our next year going to be like, and how are things going to come back? Because I feel like I can feel it starting to happen, but there's still no real answers, and we're all at the very beginning of figuring it out. So I'm just like-- and you could tell me anything and I'd be like, yeah, totally. 		
STEFFI D: Oh, I love that. 		
[MUSIC]	TEXT ON SCREEN: I miss theatre because	
FIONA SAUDER: The social contract of having to listen and not to do anything else. And I think that I miss-- I miss theater because it's a disruption to the everyday, and it's basically just, I think, a rallying cry for listening better, and togetherness, and community, and all of the things. It's so many things, but I really just miss things that are live. I miss feeling like it's-- living. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: I miss theater for the experience of theater. I feel really lucky that I've been able to do as much as I have in the pandemic. I mean, I know a lot of people aren't OK right now and a lot of people don't have the opportunity, but I guess what I'm excited about is to share that opportunity with people like Lisa, with people like you, Steffi. If you ever want to do a show and we're doing it, like please, come on over. Because we really just want to spread the joy of creating art together and share the luck that we've had so far. 		
LISA H: Amazing. I like that. 		
LANDON DOAK: I miss theater because I just like being in place. I'd rather be in a rehearsal hall than be anywhere else, and I'd rather-- my social clock runs out pretty easily, because I just want-- I like being in a rehearsal hall and that's where I feel my best, and my coolest, and my most charming. I think anybody who's in the theater, I was like just a weird kid who didn't have a thing and didn't like myself that much until I did my first musical, which was Pirates of Penzance, when I was 11. 		
And all of a sudden, I went from being that, to everybody being like, you're the best at this, you're great at this. And so I just miss auditioning, and I miss being in rehearsal halls, and I miss getting drinks with cast members after shows, and I miss partying with theater people. I just miss them. 		
RICHARD LAM: I miss theater because a huge part of my life, I realized, was about the people who were in it, and making theater and being in the theater community is like so social. And I almost-- I really took that for granted, I think, before the pandemic. I always was very struck by how busy I was and how much like scheduled Tetris I was fitting in, and I like rehearsing in a show, and then go to see your show a couple of nights a week. 		
And I took it for granted completely how many people I would see and have really nice interactions with in the course of a week doing that. I would see dozens and dozens of people who I felt very warm towards, we'd have really nice talks. And then when that all went away, I was like, wow, this is a huge part of my life that it's just not the same over the screen. 		
[MUSIC]	TEXT ON SCREEN: Wonderland is…	
STEFFI D: Finish the sentence. Wonderland is-- 		
RICHARD LAM: All around us, all the time. 		
FIONA SAUDER: Oh my god, my answer was friendship, and I hate myself for it. 		
LANDON DOAK: Wonderful. 		
VICTOR POKINKO: An oasis from all the garbage in the world. 		
	TEXTON SCREEN: Bad Hats’ ALICE IN WONDERLAND – a filmed family musical

https://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/alice-in-wonderland	
STEFFI D: Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Check in From Away. 	TEXT ON SCREEN: @steffid5 @lisahumber
Small Instagram logos next to each handle.	
LISA H: See you in Wonderland. Cheers. 		
[MUSIC]	Check In From Away logo on the screen.
TEXT ON SCREEN: @checkaway @checkinfromaway
Small Twitter and Instagram logo next to each handle.