Posted June 19, 2025

The Interview – Daniel MacIvor

Daniel, I wanted to begin by asking you about something you said in an interview with Aisling Murphy. She was talking to you about updates you made to Monster and Here Lies Henry for the Factory productions in 2023. You said, “The world has unarguably changed since the plays’ first outings … The world has become both more tender, and more brutal.” Could you expand on that a little? How has the world changed since you first started making theatre?

Well, when I first started making theatre I wrote on a typewriter and phones were not portable, so in some ways everything has changed. When I was speaking with Aisling in 2023, I was very focused on how cavalier we had been in the past with themes and stories (addiction, suicide, Israel) that now require trigger warnings or emergency board meetings. Some of that feels like progress: finding ways for communities to centre, protect, and uplift their most vulnerable members shows humanity at its best—and some of that feels like censorship: shutting down uncomfortable conversations to placate donors or sponsors feels akin to banning books. Uncomfortable is a word that feels key to what’s different—especially in the theatre world. Back in the ‘90s we sought discomfort—in the rehearsal room, on the stage, in the audience. Discomfort was an important tool—along with communion, laughter, irreverence, and ritual—that we used in order to enact what we regarded as the theatre’s purpose: transformation. As well, back in the day, our rehearsal rooms were first rigorous—perhaps dangerously so in some cases—which led us to a movement toward safe spaces. But the theatre has never felt “safe” to me; I’m not sure it can do its real work if we approach the process “safely.” It has been suggested to me that we should consider “brave spaces” over safe spaces. I like how that feels. But this journey from ruthless rigor to over-protectiveness has been an essential one I think, in order for people who have felt themselves to be othered and outsided in the process to find their place and their voice in the theatre.

You’re an innovative and prolific playwright as well as an accomplished performer and director. Your work has been seen across North America, in Britain, Europe, Australia, and Israel, and has been translated into multiple languages; you’ve won many major awards, including an Obie, a Governor General’s Literary Award and the prestigious Siminovitch Award. How did a boy from Cape Breton become one of the most influential theatre makers of his generation?

I was raised in a faith-based home and I have always had room for faith—I have always known that for me believing in something was essential. And when I rejected the tenets of the faith I was raised with (Catholicism), I allowed a belief in the theatre to fill that space. And why not, it’s all transformation in the end isn’t it—not to mention having been raised with a hard-core belief in magic and miracles—it all sounds very theatre from my POV. So for me, since the work I do is essential to my being human,I am able to work around proving myself, or impressing others, or pure achievement-seeking, and I can find ways to use my ego to feel like I am contributing positively to the lives of others. If I have been influential, it is because I believe this work matters.

Your solo shows such as See Bob Run, House, This Is a Play, Let’s Run Away, This Is What Happens Next, Here Lies Henry, Wild Abandon, Cul-de-Sac, Who Killed Spalding Gray, and Monster have been hugely successful. What is it about that one-person format that fits your aesthetic so well?

My first artistic impulses were as a writer and my training was as an actor and so it felt very much like home to bring those two pieces together in the form of solo performance. For years I felt that inside my own work was the only place I could express myself as an actor. But recently I’ve had the opportunity to work as an actor on other texts (Matthew Lopez’ The Inheritance under the direction of Brendan Healy and Bernard-Marie Koltès’ Roberto Zucco under the direction of ted witzel) and I have been wonderfully challenged and rewarded.

One label sometimes applied to your work is “metatheatrical.” Your play In On It is a wonderful example of this: two actors play characters who then create two characters, who are, in turn, rehearsing a play, playing two characters. What do you like best about metatheatre? What does it offer to audiences that more naturalistic work does not?

Again, I think this relates to my actor training. When I began writing for the theatre I had no playwriting training, so it just made sense to speak to the people in the room; it felt (to use an over-used word) authentic. There’s that wonderful tension in metatheatre between the artifice of the seats and the stage and the authenticity of performance (and the acknowledging of that artifice) that feels like communion in the truest sense.

Over the course of your career, you worked often with the brilliant Daniel Brooks; he directed many of your plays, and I believe you acted as dramaturge on his last play, Other People. Why do you think the “two Daniels” made such a great team?

Love.

If you were to describe your body of work, what are some of the adjectives you’d apply to it?

Wow, that’s a tough one. I’m not sure I can really come up with adjectives (I keep going to “flawed” and “confounding” and “irreverent,” but those feel like judgements). I think the work is often funny. Often dark. I think I would apply themes more to define the body of work. I feel like everything is about family in some way, abolishing them or creating new ones, everything is about presence, stepping into it or avoiding it, and it seems to me, thinking about it now, that everything is in some way or another about theatre, in that all-the-world’s-a-stage way.

Can you give us a sneak peek of something that you’re working on currently?

There are a few things currently in development. A solo show called Your Show Here that’s an investigation of grief and theatre where I centre my relationship with Daniel Brooks. I’m hoping to premiere it in Calgary in January. I’m also working on a multi-character play called Wherever You Are about re-constructing families which I’m hoping will find a home on the summer theatre circuit. As well I’m working with a couple of other theatre artists on collaborations. I’m directing and dramaturging Breton Lalama’s Lucky Bastard—a kind of underworld cabaret that will have a development presentation in Toronto in August at Summerworks, and I’m co-creating a two-hander with Qasim Khan called Fraught! that we’re very excited about but we’re keeping the content under wraps currently.

It’s Pride Month! As a gay artist and a longtime queer activist, do you have any words of encouragement for young, queer theatre artists?

I’ve been working for the last couple of years with Pink Triangle Press as a creative consultant and producing work for them (check out the podcast “Queer Joy” available on all major streaming platforms) and I have come to understand that queerness in the largest sense is made up of equal parts joy, heartbreak and protest. I feel like that’s something we can really bring to the theatre as queer theatre makers. Laugh big, cry hard, and don’t let the bastards get you down.