The last theatre show that Ben Caplan performed in before playing The Wanderer in 2b Theatre’s Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story was Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman with the King’s Theatrical Society here in Halifax in January, 2006. I saw this show in my 4th year at Dalhousie, and walked away profoundly impressed by Caplan’s performance. I was unsurprised to learn in a recent conversation with Caplan that prior to The Pillowman he had been an avid theatre maker and theatre doer. Yet, as a budding musician and University student there came a time where balancing theatre, music, and academia became too much to juggle, and so he, with an element of sadness, bade farewell to performing in plays, and expected that he likely wouldn’t ever return to them.
Years later he received a phone call from one of 2b Theatre’s Artistic Directors, Christian Barry, asking if he might like to collaborate on a theatre project. At first the two were not sure what the theme of the show they were creating should be. Barry had been reading a number of different folktales looking for source material. Initially, Caplan tells me, the project was his and Barry’s alone, as Old Stock’s book writer Hannah Moscovitch was busy with a successful writing project for television. Around the same time that Caplan and Barry began to think that the theme for their project might be something about immigration and refugees Moscovitch discovered the story of her great grandparents during a visit to Pier 21 with her and Barry’s young son. She then told them that she thought she knew what the story they were looking for might be. Then, Caplan says, “we were off to the races!”
As a singer-songwriter Caplan has released two albums: in the time of the great remembering and Birds With Broken Wings, and he says that as a songwriter he usually writes his music solo, so it was a process navigating the songwriting for Old Stock in conjunction with Barry. The two began having writing sessions where Caplan would come in “blank and ready to work” and Barry would have reflected on the macro ideas of the play so he could tell Caplan what kinds of plots, themes, or contexts he wanted the songs to explore, or what goals he wanted the songs to reach. Caplan would then go away and write within that framework, and Barry would tell him whether he was on the right track, or if the tone of the song was right, or wrong for the scene they were building. Caplan wrote the music for the show, but lyrically Barry was there to provide additional ideas, to help problem-solve “dead ends,” and was graceful in respecting Caplan’s process and allowing him to “hack out” drafts of songs on his own.
Caplan notes that his character, The Wanderer, is often described as the show’s “narrator.” He says he doesn’t “love” this descriptor because he feels it gives the wrong idea of him. He sees him as an “omniscient, bombastic, mischievous, god-like character” who contextualizes the story and guides the audience through both the lightest of light moments and the darkest of dark ones.
Caplan describes returning to the theatre as feeling “extraordinary luck and privilege” to have the opportunity to work with this “extraordinary team” of artists, who are among the very best in the country.
It’s so wonderful to see him back onstage in Halifax.
Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story plays at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Studio (1593 Argyle Street, Halifax) Tuesdays-Sundays at 7:30pm, with 2:00pm shows on Saturdays and Sundays. It has been EXTENDED until November 23rd, 2019. Ticket availability is limited. You can book tickets in person at the Box Office at 1593 Argyle Street, by phone 902.429.7070 or ONLINE HERE.
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