Known as "The Daniels," the partnership of Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks created several acclaimed shows like House, Here Lies Henry, The Lorca Play, Let's Run Away, Monster& Who Killed Spalding Gray? The duo was working on a new show when Brooks passed away in May 2023 at the age of 64.
MacIvor completed the play the two started, and Your Show Here, the final "Daniels" show, debuts at part of the 40th anniversary of the High Performance Rodeo January 28 – 31 in the Big Secret Theatre.
"This would be our eighth show, which we started before he passed away a couple of years ago. I finished it with him as the director in Absentia with some assistance from some embodied humans, but he's still very much a part of the show. So, it's our last show, failing some miraculous ability to make work between worlds." MacIvor said from his Nova Scotia home. Having appeared with One Yellow Rabbit several times before, debuting the show at the Rodeo is a good fit.
"The rabbits were always a yes place for us always. A deeply queer space as far as I'm concerned. They were open to the strange sideways way that we worked and off the path kind of way, queer. It just feels like I could do this show onetime. I could do it at the rodeo and feel like the journey is complete. I probably will end up doing it again, but I really feel like it's deeply important that the show close a circle with rabbits at the rodeo."
The show is a comedy about grief and a primer on on how to make your own solo show.
"It definitely has a sense of humor about it; it's got that kind of running underneath it like a subway is this idea of grief. We all have our relationship with that, but it's funny and it's occasionally devastating and also valuable if you want to make a show. Here, I'm not doing this anymore, so I'm going to tell you how to do it."
It might be wise to bring a tissue to the show.
"It touches loss, but I do think that the theater is such a wonderful place to do that because we're already in communion. I think it's profoundly sad in the way that feels satisfying as opposed to targeting your heartstrings, it's going to punch you in the gut, but then it's going to hug you and we're all going to float away together."
The story changed during Brooks lung cancer diagnosis and the creative process.
"Daniel was given a very bad diagnosis but lived for along time. I would say, so I guess this will be our last show. I think grief is one of the things on the palette, one of the colors on the palette that we've used. I think there's always somebody dead. I talk about it in this show. I say all of our shows, either I'm dead or someone very close to me is dead, always. So that's always been at play. I suppose in some ways it's a bit of a ghost story as well, but you feel the presence of that in the room."
While MacIvor will continue to act, this is the final show he will create.
"I'm not going to make these kinds of shows anymore because Daniel and I made them together, so I won't be doing that. I'm going to continue to work in this realm but there won't be any more shows like this. This is the last in a series of eight. Although I wrote them and performed them, I made them for him. I feel like this is a wildly privileged position to speak from when I say it was an opportunity for me to be with someone that I loved to make these shows. I think that the shows have value beyond that. I think that they speak to whatever they speak to and they touch people as they touch people. But the shows are about a relationship between two people. Even though the shows aren't always about that, that's their genesis. The way we made the shows is I talked and did things, and he listened and let me do things, and then he would tell me which of the things I did were interesting and which were not so interesting. He was the audience before the audience."
The show as further connection in Brook’s daughter Kate being the dramaturge.
"That was an interesting journey too, because in some ways I brought Kate into the room and maybe in some ways because I wanted him in the room, but it turned out that she had her own energy and her own vibrance, and it's been really great.
Solo shows are a very different from a full cast play.
"The magic part of it is the magic of the relationship, the communion with the audience, and that relationship is the primary relationship, and that's really rich and exciting. It feels like we're tapping into the essence of what theater manifested from, is that the solo performance seems to embody. I feel like plays have become very influenced by movies and television. This kind of solo performance where you're speaking to the people in the room at the moment of it, it feels like we're standing in the circle of the origins of the purpose of the theater, and that feels really exciting and valuable and connected."
If you’re a fan of the pair’s previous work, or seeing MacIvor for the first time,
Your Show Here is a show for theatre lovers.
"If you're interested in theater, you should see it because it's about that. I think it's a place for those of us who think the theater matters or means something to join in agreement."
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Contributor Jason Clevett |
Topic One Yellow Rabbit | Theatre |
