gillian english photo by dahlia katz
Gillian English’s hilarious solo show, She Wolf, has been selling out quickly at the Halifax Fringe Festival this year. The show comes to Halifax directly from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest Fringe Festival in the world. English, born and raised in Pictou County and a graduate of Dalhousie University’s Theatre Department, is currently based in Hobart, the capital of Australia’s island state of Tasmania. For English, Fringe is a full-time career, and she tours to international festivals throughout the year. We sat down and chatted a few evenings ago outside the Bus Stop Theatre about the inspiration for She Wolf and about being a touring artist making a livelihood from Fringe.
In many ways the idea for She Wolf, a retelling of the story of Margaret d’Anjou- a real person who had been fictionalized by Shakespeare, came from an expected place. While she was doing her Masters at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), English studied Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2. English fell in love with Queen Margaret’s monologue, which begins, “Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland, Come, make him stand upon this molehill here, That raught at mountains with outstretched arms, Yet parted but the shadow with his hand.” English made it her audition monologue while she was still auditioning for traditional theatre because it was a unique choice, one that the casting directors wouldn’t see a hundred times. English says, “I realized that these amazing female characters in Shakespeare are buried in his History Plays, the plays that are hardly ever read, or studied (either in High School or in University), and the ones that are rarely even produced.” She wanted to play the entire trajectory of Queen Margaret, beginning with playing Joan of Arc in Henry VI Part 1 (usually the actor who plays Joan of Arc also plays the role of the young Princess Margaret who appears later in the play), then reprising the role in Henry VI Part 2, and ending with the entirely fictionalized role of Margaret in Richard III. But since the character ages from fifteen to around eighty years old within these three plays, English wondered whether it was feasible to even dream of getting to do them all. She began to do some research and she realized that Shakespeare’s characterization of Margaret’s life was inaccurate. He had demonized and mythologized her, which made English wonder why. She began doing some research into William Shakespeare and she learned more about how he had written his History Plays in a way that skewed history to favour the Royal Family in charge in his day. They were essentially propaganda written to please Queen Elizabeth I.
English wondered where that left Margaret d’Anjou.
She doesn’t fault Shakespeare for writing propaganda. “He wrote what he needed to write in order to survive,” she stresses. Yet, she does fault our society that has worshipped and idolized men like Shakespeare so much that many blindly assume that Shakespeare’s history plays are supposed to be factual.
English stresses that the ways that Shakespeare portrayed Margaret over four hundred years ago is consistent with the way women, especially ambitious women, are still portrayed by the media today. She says, “Look what the media did to Hillary Clinton. We’re headed toward the God Damned Apocalypse because of her emails. … The way women are portrayed in the media and the way that men are portrayed in the media are remarkably different, especially in the words and terminology used to describe them.” The media and our society “creates something around powerful women over which they have no control, which often leads to rape and death threats.”
Originally English wanted to write a serious play about these issues, but she realized that her message would reach a wider audience with a comedy. “I think people have a better time at the theatre when they get to laugh. People who wouldn’t go see a very serious play, they’ll come see the profane comedian from Pictou County curse for an hour, and I think it’s a great vehicle to deliver my message. There are so many jokes in there at the expense of people who are not used to being made fun of.”
She Wolf won awards when it played at the New Zealand Fringe Festival and English came to Halifax directly from her first experience at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest in the world with 7,500 different shows and 3,000 performances every day. “You’re shouting into the void,” English says, “yelling, ‘Look at me! Look at me! Please! Please!’ You flyer for three or four hours a day and you may get eight people in your audience. The average audience in Edinburgh is 1.5 people or something like that. It’s a big hustle. But if you want to move into an International market, you have to do it.” She stresses that you have to go into Edinburgh Fringe with realistic goals, and that hers were career development and breaking even- and she was proud to have accomplished both. “I’ve gotten more touring opportunities from the networking I was able to do in Edinburgh. I’m going to be touring lots of new places next year and I’ve been programmed by some Shakespeare Festivals. That’s a new step. If anyone is looking to do other festivals abroad, I implore you to do your research. If you’re used to a CAF (Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals) structure, you’ll get to the UK, or Europe or Australia and find that their festivals are set up differently, to the point of it being unrecognizable. For example, the Edinburgh Fringe is open access, anyone can apply, but venues curate their seasons. A venue is usually not just one theatre, but a grouping of performance spaces, and again, anyone can apply, but if none of the venues want you, you won’t be able to do your show there.” There’s also many more fees, English explains, “You have to pay an application fee, you have to pay a registration fee, and you’ll either have to pay Venue Hire or Room Rental for your venue every single night, or do a box office split. Then there’s the ticketing fees. There’s usually two or three fees on every ticket and they don’t add it as a surcharge, they take it out of the ticket price. So my tickets might be $30.00, but by the time I see it, I’m lucky to make ten. It’s big business.” But, as she explains, this model is more conducive than the Canadian model for artists being able to make a living, as she does, touring Fringe festivals. “The only Canadian Fringe that I’m likely to keep doing is Halifax Fringe. Halifax is great, I love it, I do well here, and I get to see my family, and that’s what makes it worthwhile for me to keep coming back.”
We are very lucky to have her.
She Wolf plays at the Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen Street) at the following times:
Thursday September 6th 5:30pm
Friday September 7th 10:30pm
Saturday September 8th 2:30pm
Sunday September 9th 11:30am
Gillian English’s Live Comedy Album Recording plays at the Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen Street) at the following times:
Saturday September 8th 9:30pm
Sunday September 9th 1pm
Find Gillian on Social Media: Facebook. Twitter. Instagram (@GillEnglish).
Halifax Fringe runs from August 30 to September 9th, 2018. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit http://halifaxfringe.ca or stop by The Bus Stop Theatre in person at 2203 Gottingen Street. The Bus Stop is the Festival Hub and the Main Box Office. You can also pick up a Fringe Guide there.
You can follow Halifax Fringe on Social Media: Facebook. Twitter. Instagram (@HalifaxFringe)
Hope to see you at Halifax Fringe!
