Posted November 21, 2024
The Interview – Tracey Erin Smith
Tracey Erin Smith
Tracey Erin Smith is an internationally recognized theatre and television creator. She is the founder and driver of SOULO Theatre, which originated in Toronto, and conducts workshops in New York City, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Vancouver and the UK. Tracey is an award-winning teacher, solo performer, director and thought leader employing personal stories for transformation. She has won the Best Theatre Instructor (Diamond First Place) twice in The Toronto Star Readers’ Choice Awards. Her work has been seen Off-Broadway and she has been awarded Best of The Fringe for her solo shows The Burning Bush! and The Big House (NYC/Toronto), as well as the Broadway World Award (NYC), and the Audience Choice Award (NYC). Most recently she received the INSPIRE Lifetime Achievement Award. Tracey is also the host and creator of the award-winning documentary series Drag Heals (OUTtv, AmazonPrime, AppleTV,) and in her new book Flying SOULO she shares the process featured in the television series.
Tracey, you have such an extraordinary career that it’s hard to know what to ask you about first. But let’s start with your own work as a writer and actor of solo shows. I believe you just got back from New York City with a show?
Yes! It’s a brand-new show based on a character that I discovered, a German-Jewish immigrant to New York in the 1800s named Fredericka Mandelbaum. She looked around at the options that were available for women back then—which was to basically be a mother, a seamstress or a sex worker, whatever it took to keep your children fed. The poverty was unbelievable. The child mortality rate was insane. And she was Jewish. She, this woman, is credited as being the mother of organized crime. It took a woman, a Jewish woman, to put the “organized” in organized crime! And she made millions of dollars. She helped so many people; she gave them skills… it’s not like they went to law school—they learned pickpocketing and all kinds of things. She gave generously to her synagogue, and everyone was on her payroll. Judges, lawyers, you name it. And she engineered what was at that time, the largest bank robbery in New York’s history. Anyway, she was a genius. I’ve been looking for a mentor, because I became obsessed with Tuesdays with Morrie, and I was like, “Ah, I wish I had a mentor!” Part of the what the show is about is that if you feel like you never really had a mentor, or if you still dream of having a mentor, you can conjure one, you can invent one. And so that’s what I did. In the play, I travel through a time-space portal from 2024 Calgary, to her luxurious salon in the east side of New York City in 1884, and we have this amazing night together, during which she and I both have to make life-changing decisions.
How many other solo shows have you written and performed? Would you like to tell us a little bit about one or two of them?
Absolutely. So I think this is number eight or nine. It’s my favorite addiction, creating solo shows and helping other people create them. I learn something profound about myself and my life every time I do a new show. I created my first show at Studio 58 Theater School in Vancouver. We had to create a twenty-minute, one-person show in order to graduate, and what surprised everyone, including myself, was that mine had no words—because I like to chat! The style of the show was that of a silent movie. I used a technique I had learned from Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling, of silent storytelling set to classical and other forms of music. My solo show teacher was the amazing John Lazarus.
In a nutshell, the show was about a woman living in the 1920s who was involved in an automobile accident where her hand was severed at the wrist, and for the first time in medical history, they were able to attach a new hand. So we catch up with her; she’s at home recuperating, and she has a big (pretend) scar around her wrist to signify what’s happened. She slowly realizes she has no control over this new hand; she gets into a fight with it, and it knocks her out. She passes out, and then the hand reaches around, grabs a glass of water and throws it on her face to wake her up. But the hand and the woman realize that if they try hard enough, they can work together, but it’s difficult because this hand literally has a mind of its own and the other is connected to her brain. But they start to work together, and this leads to getting along, and this leads to falling in love. And that leads to getting married. (There’s a whole scene where I put a white veil on my hand.) And then the final scene of the show is where they’re lying on the couch together, and there’s a radio announcement, 1920s style. And it says the mystery has been solved about who the hand belongs to. The wrong hand had been attached to the woman, and it belonged to a female serial killer. So the final image of the show is the woman and the hand breathing together in unison, staring at each other as the lights go down. Where does this stuff come from? I have no idea.
The other show I’ll tell you about is from around the same period, while I was in theatre school. In the middle of the night, two words came to me, and they were “stripping preacher.” I was like, “Whoa! Stripping preacher! What’s that about?” And as it evolved, because my background is Jewish, it became a stripping rabbi. So that show was about the world’s first stripping rabbi (or preaching stripper). The name of the show, and her stage name, was The Burning Bush. That show took me coast to coast in Canada and to New York a few times.
As the artistic director of SOULO Theatre, you not only write and produce your own solo shows, but you lead intensive workshops for people from all walks of life who want to create shows or other works of art based on the method that you use. Could you tell us a little bit about that aspect of your career?
Oh, absolutely. After I had taught my first class at Act Two Studio (then Ryerson, now Toronto Metropolitan University,) which was called “Awakening the Creative Spirit,” the artistic director of that school at the time said, “Pitch us any course and we’ll run it.” And that’s when I put everything I’m passionate about into a cauldron, stirred it up, and created SOULO Theatre. The process is about excavating raw material from your life, from your lived experience, and using many different techniques to transform this raw material into something that not only helps and has an impact on you, but contains a gift for the audience. It’s a kind of theatrical alchemy. And I’ve done that now with hundreds and hundreds of people in the last twenty-two years.
This work has been about me walking with people through a process of discovering what’s inside them. What have they lived through? What decisions have they made that led to other things? We take what has happened to them and I help them turn that into a story that’s creative but also cohesive enough that the audience can follow it. I often say, “Victim stories make shitty theatre,” so if people come in feeling like they’ve been hard done by, I will help them examine what really happened and how many sides of it we can see. It’s always better to let the audience come to a conclusion than to present them with a conclusion. (That’s why we love procedural courtroom shows so much. We humans love finding the evidence and putting together our own conclusion.)
One of the things I find super interesting about the SOULO Theatre workshops is that you have done themed workshops with groups of people. Can you tell us about that?
Three shows spring to mind. We did an Indigenous SOULO show, a collective of, I think six or seven people. We did The Hair Show, which involved people who were either hairstylists or barbers, and I did The Clergy Project, which featured clergy from different faiths. And I love these shows because you know what swimming pool you’re in, in terms of it’s a certain culture or it’s a certain profession, and but there’s so much uniqueness and specificity within that swimming pool. And you also really watch people bond. When I did The Clergy Project, I felt like I was a fly on the wall in the most intimate, powerful support group. We had an iron dome of confidentiality, so that they could tell their stories without any fear of things that getting out that shouldn’t get out. And hairstylists and barbers told me they rarely get together. It can be so competitive that that there’s not a lot of alliances or wisdom-sharing or technique sharing. And so, when they realized how much they had in common with each other, they also realized how unique their stories were. One of my barbers told a story about how there was a bank robbery across the street from their shop, and after the bank robbery, the guy walked over and asked if the barber would cut his hair! One of the lines in his monologue was, “I know it’s illegal to harbour a fugitive, but is it illegal to barber a fugitive?” The stories were unbelievable. So I love that. That’s what those shows are: there’s a theme, but then there are all these unique, specific details within that theme.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about Drag Heals? How did that happen? And how does it relate to the SOULO technique?
I had been teaching Drag King workshops. (That’s where a female-identified person dresses up as a man; I call those workshops “Dude for a Day.”) I really love drag. I think it’s an amazing art form. It’s so celebratory. It’s so peacocking, it’s so delicious. And then I started to be curious: If drag artists incorporated some of their personal story into their act, what would happen? It was like an idea for an experiment. So I went to a drag queen friend of mine and I said, “Hey, I have this idea. Would you help me pull it together?” So we got eight guys who wanted to do drag, and we pulled in local experts like costuming and makeup and choreography people, and over a ten-week period, I took them through my SOULO process. Because we were pioneering this idea, we had to figure out how the personal stories could be integrated with the choreography and the lip synching, which is what comes first in drag.
And then a friend of mine said, “Hey, do you want someone to document this process?” I said, “Sure,” but it was the first time I had ever let cameras into the room during the SOULO process, because it’s such a personal excavation and such a vulnerable sharing. So Charlie David and Nico Stragis came to join us, one with a camera on his shoulder and the other one with a boom mic, and they bobbed and weaved in and out of whatever we were doing. They said they were going to make a documentary.
At the end of the process, we did a live show. It was a big hit! They performers integrated their personal stories with their drag. It was standing room only. People were crying and clapping and laughing. It was something that just worked. After that, months went by and I hadn’t heard from Nico and Charlie, these two genius guys that shot it. And I thought, “Well, I guess that’s how it goes. Sometimes things don’t work out.” (I was new to film and TV.) And then out of the blue one, one evening at my apartment in Toronto, I get an email that says, “We’ve been working with the material. We didn’t make a documentary out of it.” And I thought, okay, I guess that happens. But then the next sentence was, “But you now have a TV series.” Because there was too much material to put in a documentary, they’d cut it into episodes! And I didn’t know what to expect because I had never seen this process on camera. I had no idea how others would come off, how I would come off. So I did something that’s unusual for me: I poured a shot of peach schnapps. I belted it back, and I sat down on my couch in Parkdale and I hit play on the first episode—and within six minutes, I had my mind blown. I thought, “This is amazing!” I was laughing and crying, and then I just watched it all. That’s how Season One started. And we now have four seasons and two Canadian Screen Award nominations. And it’s crazy what can happen if you just run an idea up the flagpole and see who salutes.
Drag Heals is fantastic, and I urge readers to tune in! So let’s get to the book. Your book Flying SOULO rolled off the presses last week. Tell us about that.
Absolutely. I feel like I’ve put my methodology, my mind, my heart, and my spirit into book form. I do a fair bit of traveling to teach, but I can’t be in as many places as I would like to be, so the book offers a way for people to begin to do this work on their own or in a group, if they want to start a group. And the book is a beautiful combination of practical, interesting, original, effective exercises that they can write out and do on their own, as well as excerpts from my own SOULO shows, because people learn well from examples. The book gives you a way to start to figure out what your story is and how you want to tell it.
Would you like to tell us about Birchdale?
Absolutely! My partner, Sarah Garton Stanley, had been looking for a property for a while out east, and she found Birchdale in southwest Nova Scotia online and showed it to me one day when we were in a cafe in downtown Toronto. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’d never seen anything like it. It was like time travel! Birchdale was built in the early 1900s as a hunting and fishing lodge and it looked like it hadn’t changed. It was 58 acres, 18 buildings, 15 cabins, and it had been a monastery for 25 years before it went up for sale. There’s a stunning sanctuary, and in the same building is a beautiful library with a fireplace. We were both so intrigued that we figured we had to go stand on the land, actually put our bodies there to see what we thought. So we flew into Halifax. Sarah’s brother and sister-in-law live not too far from Birchdale, so we stayed with them, and we said, “Can you please come with us and tell us if we’re crazy? Tell us if this is nuts.” So we all drove in. It’s eight miles off the nearest paved road, and I got a little bit carsick our first time in! It’s the world’s longest driveway, eight miles of dirt road, and when you get there, you’re in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the woods, and then, all of a sudden, there’s this little village, like it feels like a village or a commune. Sarah described it beautifully. She said when she got out of the car and stood on the land, she felt like Birchdale was a friend. She just felt this vibe of friend. And it is a very special place; we’re not the only people that have felt that. Construction started on the main lodge in 1910 and was finished in 1911, and people came from all over the world to stay there. Greta Garbo was there; Babe Ruth was there. The rich and famous from New York and other states used to come up, hide out, and just do their thing. We’ve hosted weddings there; we’ve hosted a retreat for female arts leaders, we do an amazing Halloween event. I teach week-long SOULO intensives there with a performance at the end. It’s a magical place.
And we keep it open for locals because locals have been going there for generations. People will come visit us there and say, “My grandfather was a guide here. That’s his photo on the wall.” “I helped build those stairs.” “I refinished that floor.” People’s hearts and hands are all over that place.
You are one of the busiest people I know. What’s up next for you?
I’m excited to see where my new show goes next, because what we did in New York was a beautiful, theatrical, staged reading co-created and directed by the amazing Christine Brubaker. And we had some interest; people said, “You know, you’ve got something here. Let’s see what we can develop it into.” So that’s next. And I would sure like to shoot Season Five of Drag Heals in Calgary, where I’m now based. I think it’s just what Alberta needs.
Oh, and I’m directing at the Segal Centre, a brand-new one-man musical about a young guy who found out his biological father was not the man he’d been raised by. The author/performer is Noam Tomaschoff. It’s called Our Little Secret: A 23 and Me Musical.
He knew about DNA tests, and when they went on sale, his friend urged him to order one. Long story short, he told his mother he was going to do it and she said, “Why would you do that? I’ve heard they’re not very accurate.” And then the next day, his parents sat him down and said, “We need to talk.” The father begins, “I’m not your biological father.” Apparently, about thirty-something years ago, when couples used a sperm donor, the clinic recommended that parents keep the fact secret: Don’t tell anyone. Go along with your life as if you naturally conceived. Don’t tell your family; don’t tell your friends. So Noam’s parents had a secret that they’d been keeping for thirty years. And Noam’s DNA test arrived and confirmed that his dad was not his biological father. He has since discovered thirty-eight half-siblings. The biological father was a generous donor! He was a hunky pilot for Pan Am. And now Noam has made this brilliant one-man musical, which I flew to Edinburgh Festival to see. It’s going to have its Canadian debut, a first professional production, directed by me at the Segal Centre April 27 – May 18. I’m so excited for everyone to see it!
You alluded to this earlier, but would you like to speak a little bit about your journey from acting school to becoming a rabbi—and then combining those things?
You know, I come by the theatre bug honestly. My mom is a theatre person; she did voiceovers, she headlined in clubs, she did musicals and appeared on TV. At a very young age, that’s the path that I chose, or I fell into. I did many years of schooling: I went to Claude Watson High School for Performing Arts in Toronto, and then I studied theater at McGill for three years, and then did the amazing conservatory program at Studio 58 in Vancouver. When I graduated, my first professional gig was a one-woman show called Crowns and Anchors in a beautiful collection of plays called Plague of the Gorgeous, in the context of AIDS and HIV. I was in a fun season of Bard on the Beach in Vancouver and some TV, new Canadian shows, but it reached a point where I just wasn’t feeling as excited and content as I thought I would after training for ten years. And I thought, “What is it? Why isn’t it satisfying me?” And that’s when I decided, “I know what I need to do. I need to leave Vancouver and move back home to Toronto and become a rabbi.” Because, of course, what else do you do? I went down that path for a while. I got invited to an alternative rabbinical school in New York because the head of that school had seen my show, The Burning Bush, which actually has a lot of Torah study in it. But I realized that as much as I love and respect rabbis—and literally some of my best friends are rabbis—it didn’t suit me to go out into the world and represent a religion or a certain stream of a religion.
And that’s when the idea came. What if I took what I think are the healthiest and best aspects of organized religion—which are, I would say, community and ritual—and combine those with what I think is amazing about theatre—again, community, but also self-expression, comedy, drama. Theatre, like any of the arts, can hold any human experience we throw at it. In my case, instead of the clergy being at the top of the triangle, I picture an inverted triangle with me underneath. Instead of studying the Bible, we study our own life stories. We study each other’s life stories. What can we learn about ourselves by excavating and looking at our own lives, and also listening to others? And the power of listening to other people’s stories is that the things we hear can unlock things within us that would not have been released had we not heard that other story. So the person who’s sharing the story is not just releasing and growing, but the story also changes the psychic DNA of the listeners. Studies have shown that communing with other people, connecting on a real level, saves lives in terms of loneliness and mental health. It’s just good, clean, healthy fun.
I know there are probably about a thousand ways that you could answer this question, but do you have any advice for aspiring theatre people?
When you’re creating something new, push through the discomfort and try stuff. That’s the philosophy I live by. You have to push through. I just went through this with the process of my latest show, Mondays with Mandelbaum. You know, you want something to be brilliant and amazing right away. It really can’t be. But the reward for sticking with the discomfort of working with something that’s not quite there yet is that you will get there. You will get there. I’m so proud of what we shared in New York last week, but it took tears, sweat, anxiety and all. The flip side of that is that the process is also fun. I wrote some lines that got us laughing for five minutes. So you have to take the discomfort with the thrill and the joy and don’t give up. Don’t give up. It will transform into something you feel good and excited to share with people. And when it gets to that place, I will bet you money there’s something in it for the audience because you’ve poured so much care, time, thought, guts, and heart into it.
