Kat Single-Dain, director of The Scarlet Queen of Mercy, on bad acting, the creative process, and ke

It's been a good while since my last post but I have excuses aplenty. As well as working full time for all female production/distribution company Pacific North West Pictures, and getting prepared to leave on a 3 month cross country camping trip, I have been marketing, filming and performing in original musical comedy The Scarlet Queen of Mercy.

The concept of the show is that the audience are extras on a 1955 movie set, watching the chaos unfold as their maniacal director tries to create a melodramatic musical. We are also making a film alongside the show, so it’s like a film inside a play, inside a film, or something. We are now at the end of a glorious, month long run. It’s been a joyful and inspiring experience that has left me with new skills, ideas and friends, but precious little spare time for my beloved Netflix.

The woman behind this insanely ambitious project is my friend Kat Single-Dain, who is pretty much as badass a strong female lead as you can get. We sat down to chat about the show, being creative, and how she keeps as cool as a cucumber in the eye of the storm. The following has been edited and condensed.

Just a quick note: I know this isn’t particularly Netflix oriented, but in order to grow and adapt, Strong Female Lead is now focusing on all lady focused and lead pop culture. I just decided. Also, Netflix keeps taking down that goddamn category, and it’s too hot for laptop nights. So enjoy, the first of hopefully many interviews with inspiring creative ladies.

First off, what was the inspiration behind The Scarlet Queen of Mercy?

I just had an image of a director on one of those old style dollies going across the front of a stage, and imagining the whole show was in a film set. I’m always looking for the next show concept, and my interest lies in involving the audience in a show so it’s an immersive, fully inclusive environment. I don’t like the black box theatre environment of most shows; I guess I find it a bit boring. If the show is really good then it's totally worth doing, but I’m more interested in creating an environment for people to walk into.

Photos from the wonderful Diane Smithers. I'm there, hiding behind that humongous camera.

In creating the film set environment did you have much experience to draw from?

My first experience was in film: I went to UBC’s production course. At that time we were even using real film, we were the last class to do that. So I did have experience with changing the magazines, and focus pulling, all the stuff you are pretending to do in the show.

In terms of professional experience on a film set, I apprenticed as a camera assistant one summer on Smallville. After that I kind of knew I didn’t want to do film industry work. No one seemed really inspired on the film set, as in they really didn’t care what the shot was, what the content was. They were all there for the job only and it wasn’t very creative. So I just knew it wasn’t really my place and I went into theatre.

The Scarlet Queen of Mercy features a crazed, egotistical director. Where did that character come from?

You speak from your own experience, and you write from your own experience. I’m not Arthur Goudy, he’s totally over the top and ridiculous and he’s more based on a kind of Ed Wood style B movie director who takes his work so seriously. But there is something about that that I relate to as a director, a feeling that you could do everything better than anyone else and you don’t need anybody else, and it’s not true. In fact, the opposite; you totally need everybody who’s on the show and a lot of people can do it better than you and it’s kind of this journey of humbling yourself as a director. I think I’ve actually gone through that now. I know what it takes to put on a production like this: it takes everybody whose part of it.

That leads into another question: this show has got over 80 cast and crew members, mostly volunteering. How do you take a creative idea and then scale it up like that? What are the biggest challenges?

I really love the process of involving people at whatever level they want to be at. I guess the challenging part is being able to read people well. What you want to in projects like this, and other things I do, like Parade of Lost Souls (Vancouver's Hallowe'en street festival Kat and the Dusty Flower Pot crew organize, annually attended by 20,000). You want to be able to read what a person will be inspired by and what they will be good at, and then really empower them to do that thing. And then it creates a project that's so huge and everyone’s adding their piece to it. It becomes a big monster.

One thing I have loved about this production is that everyone involved takes pride and ownership of it. It’s very inspiring to see that many people come together.

I think that's the way real movements happen. Not that I’m likening this to a movement, its not the same, but it's a microcosm of a movement, because each person has to really believe in what they are doing in it for it to happen.

This blog focuses on women in film and the arts. What has been your experience as an emerging female director.

It’s been very positive. I’ve encountered a lot of women in leadership positions throughout my career. Some of my key employers who hired me for contacts to curate or direct work have been women who are directing their own companies. The head of New Works, Joyce Nizzari, She’s hired me many times over the years. Lindy Sisson at the Act Theatre, same thing. Also at UBC, the head of the department was Sharon McGowan and she’s actually runs Women in Film now.

So you’ve had lots of inspiring people on the way?

Yes, so it hasn't been hard. Also it hasn’t been hard because I make my own work, you know, as opposed to applying for jobs as a director. I do get hired in that capacity but mostly I’m just focused on creating my own stuff.

Was there a point where you decided to focus on your own thing, or was it more instinctive.

I think it was always instinctive. After working on Smallville, it was obvious to me that I wouldn’t be happy in that world, so maybe I oscillated a little bit, but over my life I have always been quite independent and just wanted to do my own thing and I guess there’s a little bit of privilege that goes along with that, having the time I guess to do that. I know that in some places, at some times, women wouldn’t have had time to dedicate to their own projects. But these days we can!

You have plans to continue the film within a play format. What are the potential sequels?

Well as you know Patrick Kearns (performer and songwriter) is super inspiring to work with. I always want to do musicals because I started in choreography and I love musicals, so I’d love to collaborate with him again on the music side. I’ve thought of underwater, or outer space, something fantastical. Get the sets crazy and the characters can involve aliens and stuff. It will probably still be B Movie just because I have this fetish for B Movies.

Where did that come from?

I wonder. I think it actually comes from studying clown. Also, at Berkley I took a class in bad acting. It was so fun; we actually studied bad actors and their techniques.

Who did you study!?

William Shatner is the worst actor in history. There are forty traits of bad actors, and he has all of them.

What are the traits?

There is a book written on it by my professor, and William Shatner wrote the introduction! He was fine with that. Some of the traits: if you watch John Waters movies he uses them intentionally. Emphasizing the wrong words in a sentence or using monotone, not making eye contact. Anyway, I just find it so funny. I like things that are taking down people's egos, so that's why I like B movies I think, because it’s showing were all just silly.

Do you mainly find yourself drawn to comedy?

I wouldn’t pin myself down to anything, because If I was inspired to make something really dramatic I would. I am definitely drawn to comedy, because I think you can get the same message across, but make people laugh at the same time.

What advice do you have for someone who wanted to become a director?

The more you do something the more you will gain experience and get better at it and therefore be given opportunities in it. Doing what you want as much as possible is really important, and not doing work for other people that you’re not inspired by. The other thing is developing yourself, so you are good at what you do, so go to dance classes if you want to be a dancer. Same thing with writing. Basically just do a lot of it and keep training because you end up meeting people in those training grounds and that's where you form collaborations, and I don’t think people really work in isolation, I think collaborations are really key for creative work. Even if you are a director you still need to work with songwriters and editors and all kinds of people.

You run The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret: an artists collective in Vancouver. How did that get started?

It got started in 2007, when a gallery owner asked our friend Andrea to produce a theatrical show at his gallery. She contacted people she knew around who were involved in stuff like that. There was this first meeting that we all remember, where we hadn’t meet each other yet.

So this guy who wanted us to produce this thing ended up backing out. I think it’s because we didn’t really know what we were doing at the time, we were just this group of disparate people who didn’t know each other yet, and we had a good vibe to us but it wasn’t very professional. When he backed out we decided to do the show anyway at another venue. The show was called the Valley of Ashes. It was so popular we end up doing it again about 6 months later!

The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret creates large-scale and participatory events, in Vancouver, a city known for its red tape. What are the challenges here?

I’ve been directly involved in talking with the city recently, because they are rewriting by laws around public celebrations and gatherings at artists studios which we are highly effected by. When it comes to running festivals the big challenge is policing costs. You’re liable even though you're a non-profit organization running a free community arts festival. When it comes to smaller scale things, like this event, the permitting process is challenging, it’s not made super easy in Vancouver. Now they’ve hired someone to work with arts organizations to find a way to make events more possible, because they recognize that it does enliven the city. They are trying, but it’s been a slow process.

I’ve worked with you for sometime now, and have noticed you’re always calm, no matter what’s going on. What’s your secret?

I think there’s a number of things, one is not thinking of issues as problems but just recognizing or expecting things to come up that I will need to deal with. That's the job of a producer or director: I don’t always get spooked or shocked by anything. Also recognizing that the more clear and direct I can be with people the more efficient and likely it is things will get done. So stress doesn’t help basically.

You’ve got to be true to your emotion too, so if you’re stressed out you don't want to suppress it. But I’ve learned over time that I don’t like feeling stressed, and how to avoid it. The most stressful situations come from lack of communication. If it's just something technical or physical that you have to deal with it's not stressful usually, unless its something falling on you. It’s mostly emotional relationship dynamics that cause it, so what I’ve learned is to be as clear as possible with each individual from the very beginning of the project.

How do you feel the show is going, now we are coming to the end of our run?

I feel really good: as excepted with a show that's totally original and doing its first run, it will be in a workshoppy stage as well as totally ready performance for audience. Knowing how it was with Hard Times Hit Parade (Kat and DFC’s 2011, Jessie Award nominated play), doing the show in 6 different cities and feeling the story totally gel at the end. I expect that it will change over time and throughout the run.

What has been the highlight of the show for you so far.

The highlight is seeing people who I believe in so much, who are so talented flourish on stage, and helping to bring that out so the audience sees it. That feels so good.