taylor olson, kya mosey, henricus gielis photo by stoo metz
I sat down with Jake Planinc, the Artistic Director of Matchstick Theatre, at PAVIA Espresso Bar & Café at the Halifax Central Library, to chat about Matchstick’s upcoming production of Michael Melski’s Joyride, which plays at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Stage from January 24th to 27th.
Matchstick Theatre, which was founded in 2017 by Planinc with Alex Mills and Chelsea Dickie, is one of Halifax’s youngest theatre companies. Yet, with a 2018 Robert Merritt Nomination for their production of Catherine Banks’ Bone Cage the company is very quickly establishing itself as an exciting force in Halifax’s independent theatre scene, as well as a place to see performances from an array of bright young emerging actors. The mandate of the company includes in its aims “revitalizing Contemporary Canadian plays,” and Planinc and I began our conversation with our shared love of the Canadian theatre.
As a student at Mount Allison University Planinc was initially interested in the iconic plays of the American canon, but it was an introduction to David French (at the encouragement of one of his professors) that sparked his interest in plays written closer to home. He has been eagerly reading as many Canadian plays as possible, but admits that there’s still a lot he doesn’t know and hasn’t read and he finds this untapped potential even more exciting. “I feel like turning into Canadian Theatre really gave a form to what I wanted to do [as a theatre artist.] Early on, I knew that I wanted to direct, but I didn’t know what I wanted to focus on. I knew I wanted to start a new company, but I didn’t know what the focus of that company was going to be. I think that giving second stagings to Canadian plays is something that doesn’t happen often enough,” he says. I couldn’t agree more. In Nova Scotia for sure, but also across the country, I think that we have a real challenge when a play reaches the level of success where it either is published or should be published, but then (after a lauded tour or just one acclaimed run) it’s never produced again, so it fades away into the ether of the memories of the handful of people who were lucky enough to have seen it. It’s frustrating and tragic that this should be the reality for so many Atlantic Canadian playwrights.
It’s not surprising that Planinc and Matchstick Theatre have found an incredible support network with Halifax’s playwrights. It was at a Playwright’s Guild of Canada Conference, which Catherine Banks invited Planinc, Dickie and Mills to over a year ago, that Josh MacDonald approached Planinc suggesting he read Michael Melski’s play Joyride. “We were the greenest people [at the conference],” Planinc explained, “and no one really knew who we were, so we were introducing ourselves and talking about what we were interested in, and I was talking about growing up in St. Catharine’s, Ontario, which is a very industrial city that lost all of its industry, and had a high unemployment rate and how things were looking very ugly there and after the conference Josh MacDonald said, ‘You should read these plays by Michael Melski. He is from Sydney, which has gone through a very similar transition, you will probably love these plays.’ and he was absolutely right. I love them. Now I’ve read pretty much everything Melski has written but Joyride and Heartspent and Black Silence are in this little collection together and I just fell in love with them immediately.” Planinc, Mills and Dickie were planning to apply to Neptune Theatre’s Open Spaces Program (a joint program between Theatre Nova Scotia and Neptune Theatre which provides one professional theatre production a year with one free week of performance space at Neptune’s Scotiabank Studio Theatre, 90 hours of free technical support, and full coverage of Box Office, Front of House, and Bar costs) and Planinc said he wanted to direct Joyride, as 2019 would be the play’s 25th Anniversary. After being the recipient of the Open Spaces Program, and getting so much support from Michael Melski, Planic feels like “things fell into place very nicely all at the right time.”
Joyride premiered at the Atlantic Fringe Festival in 1994 and launched Melski’s career as a playwright. Planinc says that it’s inspiring as emerging artists to see someone as successful in the theatre as Melski, who has also gone on to become a filmmaker, and to realize that they too once began writing for Fringe. Matchstick’s production stars Kya Mosey, Henricus Gielis, and Taylor Olson, who are for Planinc, “three of the best young actors in the city.” He continues, “They are incredibly talented and I think that all their roles are quite challenging for them, and that the play is giving them some new things to tackle.” The characters in the play are young, working class kids who grew up in Sydney and who are struggling to improve their circumstances. Planinc says, “I think [the play] shows how your environment can shape who you become as a person and the decisions that you make. This is certainly a play about choices- not necessarily good ones- and I think that these choices are informed by the environment that the characters live in.”
Planinc, Mills and Dickie continue to look to the more established members of the theatre community for inspiration and guidance. They have had a meeting with Mary Vingoe, co-founder of Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre, Eastern Front Theatre, and Ship’s Company Theatre, and are excited to meet with the members of Zuppa Theatre after the run of Joyride. Another role model for Planinc, who is on the board of the Bus Stop Theatre, is Sébastien LaBelle, the Bus Stop’s Executive Director. Planinc sees LaBelle as doing everything he can to engage as many different communities of people as possible in his effort to make sure that the Bus Stop, the only incubator for the creation of new Haligonian theatre left, stays open. “We’ve done six shows there,” Planinc says, “they’ve been great to us. It’s great to get to do this show at Neptune because it helps us grow as a company, we’re hoping it helps us find new audience members, and we get a new stage to play on, and that’s fun, but the Bus Stop is where my heart really is. I love it there. We are doing everything we can to keep it going.” In fact, the Bus Stop is where they are rehearsing Joyride, through the theatre’s free rehearsal space program, vividly demonstrating how the theatre is absolutely essential to keeping Halifax’s theatre community alive.
In closing, Planinc describes Joyride thus: “[It’s] 55 minutes long, it’s definitely for mature audiences. It’s got nine scenes, but it’s rapid-fire. It’s really quick. It’s also quite funny. [Melski’s writing] hits you in unexpected ways. It’s a high-speed drive. You get caught up and ripped through it, and it’s very exciting.”
I’m excited to get caught up and ripped through 1994 Sydney, Nova Scotia when Joyride opens on January 24th!
Matchstick Theatre’s production of Michael Melski’s Joyride plays at the Neptune Theatre Scotiabank Stage (1593 Argyle Street, Halifax) from January 24th to January 27th. Shows are at 7:30pm Thursday to Sunday and also at 2:00pm on Saturday and Sunday. For tickets please visit this website.
For more information about Matchstick Theatre visit their website. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@matchstick.theatre).
