Studio 180 Blog

With the recent announcement that Studio 180 has once again been selected as a third party recommender for the Ontario Arts Council’s Theatre Creators’ Reserve program, we thought it was an excellent opportunity to touch base with one of our past successful applicants in order to get a sense of where they’re at with their project, and to give potential new applicants a sense of the kind of work the program (and Studio 180 in particular) is focused on supporting.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to look too far. When Jonathan Seinen applied to the program in 2010, he was an unfamiliar name to our Core Artistic Team. But since his successful application he has become an integral part of the Studio 180 family by virtue of his being cast in our upcoming production of The Normal Heart. Jonathan plays Tommy in Studio 180′s presentation of Larry Kramer’s seminal work (which begins previews October 14th at Buddies in Bad Time Theatre), but in his spare time he is hard at work developing Lily, a project concerned with sustainable living. So without further adieu we present guest blogger, Jonathan Seinen.

Jonathan Seinen on the Theatre Creators’ Reserve program

Jonathan Seinen

Although The Normal Heart is my stage debut with Studio 180 Theatre, it feels to me like we have worked together before. This spring, through the Ontario Arts Council’s Theatre Creators’ Reserve grant, Studio 180 provided me with the funding to make possible a research trip to California where I started work on a new play, Lily. Like Studio 180, my work in playwriting and collective creation is focused on creating discussion and engagement around socially relevant issues through theatre.

I spent two weeks living and working with my aunt in Northern California. She has a beautiful property on a hillside where she has built her own house, has a big garden, raises emus and chickens, and gets her power from solar panels. My goal in spending time with her was to get my hands dirty working with her, learning my way around the land and getting more connected to where my food comes from. I was interested in finding a more sustainable way of living, a way of life that is off-the-grid. My cousin and his partner from Atlanta, Georgia had also recently made a move to California, and they were building their new home, a cabin, on my aunt’s property.

While I was there, I would work part of the day with my family, and the other part I would spend writing, and when it got too hot, we would drive down to the swimming hole on Fish Creek. The play I developed there is a Theatre for Young Audiences script about a fourteen-year-old girl, Lily. The play finds Lily in her bedroom in Toronto where she is preparing a homework assignment entitled What Did You Do This Summer? Lily, with her parents divorcing and set to start high school that September, was sent to spend the summer on her aunt’s farm. There, moving through a time of great personal change, she discovers a new relationship with the planet, with her family, and with herself. I was able to produce a first draft of the script during my time in California.

In writing the play, it became apparent to me that the best way to talk about these issues of sustainability and food was to aim the play towards young people. As for my generation, it was when we went home from school and asked our parents, ‘Why aren’t we recycling?’ that things started changing. This time, I want to encourage young people to go home and ask, ‘Where does our food come from?’, to start conversations about health, eating habits, and the distance our food travels from the farm to our plate.

Thanks Jonathan!

It’s great to hear that the time afforded by the program has helped Jonathan find a new direction for the script. When the story first came to us it was called Redway, California and it was in no way pitched as a story for Young Audiences. But this kind of development and redirection of one’s efforts is exactly the kind of work enabled by the program. The Theatre Creators’ Reserve allows artists to explore without the obligation of production and permits ideas to grow, as naturally and organically as the produce you might pick up at your local farmer’s market.

If you’d like more information on the program and Studio 180′s requirements for submission, be sure to consult our website.