We chat with Aaron Bushkowski, one of Canada’s most produced playwrights, who brings a whirlwind of creativity to the table—from theater and film to poetry and novels. Aaron’s unique perspective, shaped by personal experiences like receiving a life-saving kidney transplant, transforms his storytelling into something deeply human and relatable. We explore the intricacies of writing with depth and subtext, the unpredictable nature of creativity, and how the world of storytelling is evolving in the age of AI. Get ready for some laughs, a sprinkle of wisdom, and a whole lot of heart as we navigate the wild ride of artistic expression.

Takeaways:

• Writing effectively means using fewer words to convey deeper meaning, a skill that can transform storytelling into something truly impactful.
• The unpredictability of storytelling not only keeps us engaged but also reflects the complexities of human experiences and emotions.
• Art and life are intertwined, as they both provide a mirror that helps us process grief, love, and connection with others in profound ways.

Your voice is your superpower. Use it. Welcome to Ignite My Voice Becoming unstoppable. Powered by Ignite Voice Inc. The podcast where voice meets purpose and stories ignite change.

Deep conversations with amazing guests, storytellers, speakers and change makers.

It's unpredictable. Our business is unpredictable.

But the number one rule for all writing is that you have to make sure that you're using as few words as possible to create the greatest depth you know.

Today's guest proved that great writing isn't just heard, it's seen.

Aaron Bushkowsky is one of Canada's most produced playwrights with award winning work spanning theater, film, novels and poetry.

Count em nine Jesse nominations. Nine. Two wins. And he continues to shape the next generation of writers with precision and power.

But his work goes deeper than craft. Aaron writes from life where art and.

Experience collide, from receiving a life saving kidney transplant to transforming personal into powerful storytelling.

His play the Replacement Wife emerged from that place. I had the privilege of stepping into that world playing Rachel. What an experience.

Which tells you something. His stories don't just entertain, they process what it means to be human.

His rule? Use as few words as possible to say the most.

And in a world chasing speed and spectacle, he reminds us story lives in.

Subtext and that's where the human voice beats the AI machine. Here's Aaron.

I think just the fact that repetition and understanding how you can create stories that actually have an effect on people. So that, you know, my theory is that at the 90% point of any story, there has to be very little hope anymore.

And so I did that book knowing that at the 90 percentile there's going to be characters that feel like there's no hope left. And so they have to make a decision to change their lives in order to regain that hope. It can't be just magically thrust upon them.

So the journey for the main characters is much clearer in here than here. Even though they're both dual protagonists, isn't.

That something along the lines of the hero's journey?

Possibly, yeah. I mean, there's different theories out there on what the hero's journey really means.

Okay, tell me, because I don't know those theories.

I've taken a lot of different writing classes, even film writing classes, and everybody has their theory about how you should make the journey, the hero's journey. But some journeys are over much earlier than others and there's some that are unfinished. Thelma and Louise is a good example.

Or a butch casting a Sundance Kid that is left to our imaginations because they Jump off a cliff right into the water below. Do they survive or not survive?

I think Thelma and Louise survived.

Sure.

In a car off a cliff.

There was a. It wasn't that far.

They can float. Right.

There was a water underneath and they had parents parachutes on. They thought about it before. It's just my hope.

So in your stories, is there an obvious resolution you come to in your stories or do you like that hanging ending?

So here's my process of writing, and I was told by a creative writing teacher I had once to follow a plot outline that does not work. Because if I look at. And this works in film too, because they ask you for a beat sheet. I find that very difficult to read a beat sheet that I know.

On point number 24, a character has to do a certain thing. So for me, it's like I leave Vancouver on my journey of writing and I'm going to end up in Winnipeg. Sorry to say, but...

I feel for you. Yeah.

I don't know if I'm going to go through Saskatoon, Regina, or through Montana. I just know I have to end up in Winnipeg. And that's the important part. So I know my beginnings and I know my endings.

And I know just before I hit Winnipeg, I'm going to hit a horrible place where things. There's no hope. Brandon. Brandon. Maybe it's that.

So do the characters guide you?

I get surprised by my characters. Yeah. So I want my characters to actually do things that are surprising. Sometimes the story has to find you. It's not you finding the story.

How does that happen?

Well, if you write enough and you occupy the minds of your characters enough, they start to take over the story.

That sounds like psychosis.

It is. I think writing is probably a psychotic adventure. A little bit. Yeah.

But you really have to let go, don't you? You have to let go control of deciding, making that big determination when you let your characters guide you right.

And they have to be surprising. And I'll say, even at the play we just finished, there was, I looked, the replacement wife.

The replacement wife, Jonna, said, I don't know the ending. Do you know the ending? And I said, I don't know the ending either.

But then the flag pole, the May pole thing, was stuck in my head, which is a Ukrainian maypole thing with the IV pole. And I said to the director, why don't we try that? Because we already have that sort of motif built into the play as an anchor.

And she said, I don't think that'll work. But then when we did it. It did work. Right. So that was the ending. So it did change that ending quite a bit through the process.

I mean, at one point we had all the characters on the stage, and then we just had one. We had your charact. Bill's character on stage, and then we got rid of that idea.

So it's a matter of trial and error, really, to find that perfect ending. Right.

It must be so fascinating to be a writer, have your characters take over and then have a director come in and characters come in and see it be produced on stage. And I know as an actor in the Replacement Wife, it was such a pleasure working with you as the writer.

I've never had an opportunity to work with the writer.

And what an amazing collaborative, creative opportunity that was to watch how you worked and the director work and then each of the characters worked together and to not know. None of us really knew how it was all gonna come together, but we trusted the process.

And it's true that you'd have carte blanche to change lines if you felt. I mean, I think you did change lines.

I changed one.

You changed one. Yeah.

That was. Don't hold me accountable. Something like that.

Yeah, something like that. Right, right.

And I did say earlier on that especially the young voice, I mean, the 22 year old character in our play, you know, it's hard to pick Susie's language up in a way of speaking. So she did correct a lot of what I'd written, like changing the bra.

Well, you're a long distance from 22, I guess, right?

Yeah, I'm a long distance.

So are we, but whatever. Gavin, thank you.

Well, I mean, it's helpful. You might have students that are around that age and you can sort of pick up some that.

But it's funny, a lot of the stream of consciousness stuff that she does say because she's on drugs a lot. We didn't change much of that at all. That was as written. And I feel that for some odd reason, that character didn't evolve or change much.

And I think it's because that character is an angel character. Even though we understand what happens to that character and that angel character effects change with the other characters, that causes change. Right.

So the other characters are massively changed by the angel character. That always speaks the truth.

Such a ripple effect. And I mean, we can have that in our own lives too.

When you hold yourself accountable for who it is that you are and being authentic and dealing with people on that level, you actually can change them in their mindset and their direction. And a cellular level. So I think it's really cool that art imitates life and life imitates art.

And I know that this play was something very personal for. And it came from personal experiences that must also. Is that cathartic? Does that bring up trauma? How does that process work?

Well, it's very strange because I don't know if I told you the story about how we got the title for that, which was when I was visiting Diana in a hospital at bgh.

Diana, your wife?

My wife, who passed away from appendix cancer, a rare form of that. In the last days, she kept pointing to this woman with wild, crazy hair behind me at 3am and I would keep looking and go, there's nobody there.

And I said, who is this woman? And she said, oh, it's the Replacement Wife. And I thought, that's a great, great title. She said, well, you should do something about it.

So that's where the idea came from. And sometimes you have an idea, like you have the title, which is very different for me, because often I don't have the title.

It's the last thing that falls into place. But here I had the title and I went, oh, I can see the whole thing already just because of that title. And part of what the Replacement Wife is, does.

It takes the same story of War One, which is a lot of people that husbands didn't come back from World War I and they remarried or they met somebody else, and then the husband shows up because they had to take a long ship back and cross the country.

And it took them like, months and months and months or years even, and then they find out the other person they were with is with somebody else, possibly. So we sort of played with that premise in the Replacement Wife.

And actually from the first draft to the draft that appeared on stage, added character, we changed characters. It evolved. It's a process of evolution, by constantly workshopping and getting ideas and throwing out bad ones, keeping the good ones.

And that's what we did.

When you're working with people and who, you know, this is your baby, and then they come in and say, no, I think you should change this and I think you should change that. How do you stay open to other people's ideas?

I always say to other writers that are working at the craft, you have to be open to ideas because it's a very collaborative effort and there's going to be some bad ones. And it's partly what our business is all about. People will make bad decisions and you're the final gatekeeper.

And so you have to be open to the fact that another person might fix your play or might improve it and that an actor might wreck it, too. So you are ultimately the decider of that.

And it's a tricky job because sometimes people in theater have a lot of power and they can make many changes. And I've had shows go the other way, too, so.

We didn't wreck it, did we?

No, no, it was great. It was great. We did wreck it.

Just checking.

And I think we. You know, I don't think you were involved in all the other workshops that I'm not, but. But it did change quite a bit from first time out. Massively.

In fact, the Greeter was the latest character we added. And probably that's the key to it.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

The glue. We couldn't figure out why it wasn't working until the Greeter appeared.

And he truly was the glue. And he didn't have a lot, but he had this big through line through the play, at least his presence.

And I'm surprised a lot of people didn't understand what kind of greeter he was. Even though we talked about Hades in the first scene, you know, a lot.

So, Kevin, you saw the play. When did you pick up that the Greeter was a different kind of greeter?

It took me a while. Yeah. I mean, I heard those cues. I was still kind of piecing it together.

Kevin's slow anyway.

Yeah, well, it's true. I process stuff.

Yeah.

No, it took me a little while,.

My friend, so I can say that once I did.

I mean, you know what I hate? I hate whether it's comedy or writing, if I beat the author to the main punchline, I hate that.

Right. I hate it, too.

And so when you beat me, I give you respect and you beat me. I took a while to catch up to you, and so that was awesome.

I was just listening to you guys thinking, you know, that ensemble creativity, it seems such a wonderful art form. And I'm comparing that to. Because that's something else you do. Screenplay writing. It feels very different to me.

You know, it feels like the bankers play a lot stronger role in that medium than this one. Would that be accurate?

Yeah. My experience with film, because I was lucky enough to be on set when we did my short film.

Short film in those days was 24 minutes or 23 minutes because of the half hour format, which fit into CBC. Right. So when Bill Dow was directing it, we won a lot of money.

Bill was also in the Replacement Wife.

In the Replacement Wife, yes. And so we got money from the Canadian film set. No, it was one of those places, National Screen Institute, I think it was nsi.

We got money to do this because we won a competition. So I went on set because I wanted to experience the full film experience. Right.

Don't they want to keep you off set?

Usually they do. Yeah, they do. And so we were doing a scene in the alley with two very experienced actors and Bill said, cut.

And he walked up to me and he says, what are you doing with your face? And I said, what do you mean, what am I doing? I'm just the writer. I'm standing over here by the camera.

And he says, well, the actors are complaining that you're making a face. You look disgusted or something. I said, I'm not making a face.

You're intimidating, Aaron.

I'm not making a face. He says, you're grimacing and you're grimacing the same line. Every time Tom says a line, you grimace. And he's noticing it. So I said, oh, I don't.

I didn't even notice those grimacings. So I said, I will not grimace. I will just. You will not even see me this time.

I'll be Wear a mask.

I will be completely stone faced. So I just stood there. They did not take. I was stone faced. I stared straight ahead. And then Bill goes, cut. He says, what are you doing now?

He says, they're both upset. Cause you're staring straight ahead. It's like you hate everything and you're not gonna look at him anymore.

You can't win.

Yeah. He says, maybe you want to go to where the monitor is in that tent down there. Stay. So that's what I did. It was not.

It was not as enjoyable because, you know, it's a many, many takes. You know, it's. They take the best take. They put it together. It's not like theater or anything can happen in any given night.

Yes, it certainly does, doesn't it?

And you know it. You know, things go wrong, which is way more fun.

Not really. It is and it isn't.

And the last time I was on set because my dog was performing. She's trained for film and tv. She was in a Bruce Sweeney movie. And Bruce was ready for takes to go horribly wrong every time.

But my dog, being that well trained, not by me, perfectionist, not by me did.

It was a one take wonder and would do things like steal a hammer, talk on the phone, jump out of a car window, run and hide under the car, run and hide in the forest, like on One take, and then we were done. And he said, well, maybe get a second take. And I said, I don't know if she'll do it a second time. But, you know, less enthusiasm.

But so you're there for the experience. But often they take stuff and they go to the editing suite and they change things in there. So, you know, it's not really the same as theater.

Do you have a favorite, like, medium? So you write books, you write poetry, you write plays, you write screenplays.

I mean, and I'm a cartoonist.

Okay, I didn't know that.

That's how I started. I was the cartoonist for the University of Alberta student newspaper. That's how I started all this.

So writing and drawing.

Yeah, yeah. And photography. That's where I started. A lot of my original stuff was cartooning and photography and that kind of stuff.

So. And you're also a professor.

What's the through line through all of that?

I would say the. All writing requires people to see things.

Like, for example, in a play, when they're describing things, you have to be able to see that they're at the Hoover Dam, for example, with you. You have to see that. And so all genres require you to write visually so that people can really see what's going on or imagine it.

And so little tricks that we use sometimes in theater is we get rid of ing ending words. So rather than I'm walking down the street looking for my wife, you go walk down the street, look for my wife. Where is she? See, you change.

You change.

We call that theater of the mind. And we talk about that with the people that we teach performance with. They have to see who they're talking to. They have to visualize the responses.

And as an actor, we do the same. I invite visualize seeing the Hoover Dam, what that feels like, you're not there, but there's that essence to it.

So it even starts before the actor gets it. The playwright or the writer has to see it.

Right.

So important, because that language is colorful, and it gives whoever's reading it or performing it the feeling, the action, the credibility, the depth. That's amazing.

And you have. I mean, I'm lucky that I started off in photography, illustrating, and moved to poetry, because poetry is, you know, snapshots.

And it's fewer words to give more meaning. Really. It's like a diluted sauce or a sauce that has been sitting on the stove for a while.

So you're trying to use as few words as possible in poetry to create the most depth. And so that really works well. In theater and in film, when you think about it, because film has a lot fewer words than theater.

And advertising, too.

And advertising. I worked at advertising, too, for a few years. I worked in advertising. So, yeah, you gotta get that hook. You gotta get people's attention.

You have to see it once you.

Get their attention, and then they get invested. But if you don't get that attention, right.

And it's sometimes the way when you're writing comedy, comedy, it's like Boston. We have to. Because you had a line in the show that. Oh, my gosh, that I did not think I was gonna get a laugh. Like, this is the thing. Like, we just.

What are you gonna do? Hold my hand? Old people holding hands are like.

They look like they're just doing it for balance. And we thought that was a throwaway something. It got the biggest laugh every night. It got the big.

And I sat there and I said to the director, why is that line? We never anticipated that.

Well, it was my great delivery, of course, Aaron.

But every night, right, we would go like we'd had. I was surprised the other actor had to wait for that laugh to go away. So comedy is. We don't know why it works or how it works, but it's. It does.

And some of the other lines that I thought were extremely funny didn't get the kind of reaction like that line got.

Yeah, like the dim sum line didn't get. We had a line about dim sum. But, yeah, it's unpredictable. Our business is unpredictable.

But the number one rule for all writing is that you have to make sure that you're using as few words as possible to create the greatest depth. When I was younger, I wrote in my yearbook, I think it was in grade eight, that I wanted to be a writer.

And my parents were just so shocked to read that they almost completely disowned me. Disowned me, because they didn't understand where that was coming from. Now, I grew up in a very, very religious family.

In fact, my father was a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher boy.

What happened to you?

I know. I know.

It comes out in the words here.

And I would get so bored with his sermons, I would, you know, had to listen to 3,000 of them or whatever over my time that a lot of times in. In church, I would pick up a hymnal, and I would just start drawing and doodling and, you know, writing notes and all that.

And then I got in trouble because somebody brought the hymnals to my dad, said, somebody's been defacing. It was all My doodles and all my writing and everything that I. You know, because I was so bored.

So I think that's part of it, is that you have to have the imagination to visualize another world outside of yours, no matter how sad and pathetic it might be with somebody preaching to you all the time. But also, I think, visually, and I'm not sure why. So that's kind of what drives me a bit.

Like you think about cartooning, photography, visual in plays, you're trying to get people to visualize what people are saying. And film is also visual poetry. Very visual. That's why poets make great film writers.

I think I'm just wired that way because nobody else in my family ended up being that way.

You know what's funny?

What, Kevin?

I have two kids, 8 and 12. And Aaron brought up bored.

And we've talked about that in our class.

And something we've talked about a bit and I see in my kids is I worry that my kids aren't bored enough.

They're not bored enough. Yes.

I worry about that because it strikes me boredom's brought out a lot of things in us. Like you just demonstrated, right. That maybe never would have risen to the surface had you not been bored.

Creativity.

Yeah. And I think maybe there's some genetics in there. My father probably wrote 12,000 sermons.

You know, I think that takes some creativity to write all that. I mean, and he loved the attention he got from after a sermon.

It's a bit different for a writer because they all want to see the actress or the actor. They're all flocking to see you guys. So it's not, you know, we don't get that kind of attention, but I think it's an other.

It feeds me in another way. And I don't know. I'm not clear on it yet why, but I just. I think there's the stories I have to tell and I have to get them out.

I'm not sure why that is. Yeah, it's interesting. I can't explain it.

Just that creative vibe. Do you see that as a professor with your students? Can you harness that?

So most real writers are addicted to the process of rewriting and rewriting and rewriting to get something done. People that want to be writers, that want to be writers are happy to do one draft and they're done.

But people that really love to enjoy the profession and love the process, they are going to rewrite until the cows come home. And it's the old saying, no script is entirely finished. It's just abandoned at the Best possible point.

And I like that.

And that's what I do. I try to abandon things at the best possible point.

I have some plays here, of course, that I want to change, especially my reference to Wayne Gretzky. You know, I think that if they ever get done again, some of these that are published, of course I'm going to change them.

You know, they're not finished yet, actually.

That's funny to hear, because with our.

Books, all we do is rewrite forever.

It is such a process, and it is, what they say, a labor of love. You pour your heart, your energy, your soul, and then, I don't know, it's.

A labor of frustration.

Yes, that too. But you pour your heart into it and then you give it to someone and they read it. Isn't that such a vulnerable part of the process?

It is a totally vulnerable part of the process and one that can go horribly wrong. And I feel that I've had experiences like that, but for the most part, because I often get people that I know to work with, it's worked in my favor.

And that's the. I haven't seen the productions in Europe because that's a little bit different for me because there's certain jokes that don't work over there.

Different culture.

Different culture.

Context.

I did an Alzheimer's play where one of the older patients was going around with a baseball glove and throwing a ball into it constantly, but it was attached by a string because if he missed his glove, he would just, you know, as an all set, he'd find it. So then I saw pictures from that same show in Lithuania, and I didn't see a baseball glove. I saw a soccer ball.

And I was like, I didn't write anything about a soccer ball. Oh, yeah.

The change in culture, of course.

Right. Of course.

It was attached to a string to his foot. So it made sense.

The concept is there, just.

Yeah, yeah. That's the kind of lack of control you might have as a writer. But when it works, it works, right.

You just hope other people are going to jump on your boat. Doesn't always happen.

And going back to students so you can tell that a student is on the path to maybe becoming a writer because of the rewrites. But can you foster people to see theater of the mind and bridge that and bring that into their scripts?

Because there's so many ways now that younger people we certainly see in our classes and our programs are dealing with social media and they're telling stories in a different way. When you're talking about brevity that hits me.

That's all true that the way we tell stories has evolved.

And so people are affected by the fact that they can do TikTok things and run things off their phone. I mean, it is important to remember that our new generation is becoming very, very visual.

I mean, they're driven by visual stuff, not necessarily what's printed. So we have to tune into that. And even on our writing on stage, we have to tune into that.

We can't have those scenes that go on for eight minutes in this show. For example, I think the longest scene we had was about four or five minutes in Act 2. There's two of them, right? That's right, yeah.

So we just, we have to realize that the up and coming students have a different way of seeing the world, viewing the world. And we're also combating with VR too, virtual reality. So that's a new way of storytelling.

And AI and AI how's that affecting writers?

Well, AI I think I got my first AI script in the last two days, I think my very, very first one. And I said, why are these two 20 year olds talking like robots? It just seemed like there was no subtext at all. Very obvious.

And I think it was AI because AI doesn't get subtext really. It'll make obvious jokes and obvious choices. That doesn't mean that we're not far from that.

So we have to think about AI actually as a tool for us somehow, not an enemy, because it's not going away. Well, I think there's a way to actually incorporate AI so that we maybe check to see if AI would find our characters believable for one.

Or have we been fair to all the characters? Or maybe ask AI is there a turning point in this script? Those are important things. AI might be able to help there.

Did you put the replacement wife through? No, I'm not gonna.

No, no, no.

Aaron, you make the little hairs in the back of my neck stand up. I have trouble asking a machine to evaluate a human emotion or response. My course says no, that's never going to happen.

I mean, the tool will be useful in other ways that particular one.

You know, I read an article, maybe.

I read an article a little while ago I found interesting by a professor in the US A professor of literature. And the article, I think, was called Stop Meeting Students Where They Are.

And his point as a literature professor was he bought into the administration's push to, oh, the new generation's totally different. They don't read anymore. We can't give them novels. We can't do that anymore. We got to teach this whole in a totally different concept.

And somewhere along the way, he went, wait a minute, I'm a literature professor. I'm trying to teach some core stuff here. And he went back to demanding full book analysis and stuff.

And he feels the students loved it, that it was highly successful. And he came out advocating really strongly. I think we've made a mistake. I think we've listened to marketers or something.

I don't think you're far off from that, because I do think that students are now preoccupied with their phones enough. They're on their phones, they're on their laptops. And so going to see theater, for example, is a way of escaping that.

And so I really don't know how AI is going to be involved in all of our writing, but I don't think it's going to go away. And I think it's going to get more and more complicated and better at adapting to our world.

My niece in Texas has given up on her phone and has switched to a flip phone because she felt that she was wasting too much time on her phone and her tablet. So she switched to just a flip phone that doesn't have any messages or anything like that.

No socials.

Yeah. So there is a backlash against it. And because of the show we just did right now, and student ticket prices were $15, very cheap.

We did notice, especially in the last part of the show, the last week or so, more and more students came.

Out and they loved it. Lots of high school really moved by it.

Lots of high school, yeah.

I was so pleased at their reaction. And I think one of the things that I appreciate about your writing is a word that you mentioned earlier, which is subtext.

And AI doesn't have that intuitive grasp yet. Hopefully we'll never get there. And I don't think it will on subtext, because subtext is such an interesting part of writing, isn't it?

And you love it.

I do like it. I feel that sometimes I overdo it. As Bill said, the actor of my show, he said, there's too many ellipses in this show. For me.

So I think it's hard to master subtext, and sometimes you do miss entirely.

But I think AI I know we're selling it short right now with the subtext, but I don't know if we'd say the same thing in 10 years from now about subtext and AI. I just don't know. I feel we might be.

I don't think any of us know.

Hard to predict.

But right now it seems to reside in the humanity sphere rather than the AI sphere. And that's what I think connects us.

That juiciness in the subtext that underneath, there's so many layers to that and there's so many layers to communication that AI can replicate.

The brain is so complex, has evolved from a terrible beginning. You know,.

Running from dinosaurs.

Well, yeah, if we look at. Yeah. The core. And I mean, as we talk often, the. The frontal cortex coming offline and the fight or flight and all the stuff that we go through.

Can a machine pick that up? Yeah, I have a lot of trouble with that. I don't think that will ever happen, you know.

Well, I mean, there is a rumor out there, I don't know if it's true or not, that AI is writing possibly Hallmark scripts or that might be in the future. I don't know if it's entirely true.

Hasn't it been writing Hallmark scripts since the very beginning, or has most of.

Those movies looked like for a long time?

And that's not a dis. Again, against Hallmark, because I've wanted to be in a Hallmark show forever.

It's not art.

And they. They just haven't picked me up yet. I don't understand it.

You want to be famous any way you can, huh?

It's big in Texas, I'll tell you. My sister watches them all, so I.

Hear so many people watch them. Yeah, it's kind of. Kind of funny. Good old Hallmark.

That's kind of sad.

I haven't written for him. I don't think they'll ask me, but.

I don't think they have a lot of subtext in Hallmark. So I think you're kind of out there.

I don't think they have a lot of emotion. I don't think they have a lot of true character.

A lot of emotion in a Hallmark.

Cardboard characters.

Yeah, lots of those.

But what does it say about us that people watch that? What does it say about the needs of a certain target audience?

And I do think that we're not. I don't think I want to sell them short. Hallmark audience.

I don't want to sell them short, but I think because they're basically, they're love stories.

So I think that today in particular, because it feels like there's so little hope out there, I mean, I'm talking about politics on a grand global scale here, that people need more hope today. And I think that's why they really want the Hallmark movies. They love the happy endings. They want things to be ideal and people to be in love again.

Our younger generation wants that too. So you know what I call that?

Aaron McDonald's hope. It is predictable, safe.

Uh huh.

And you're right, there's a need for it. There's a need for it.

I can walk away from the art and the creativity and the deep level characters and go, I get that, I get that we need some hope now. So I guess so let's turn that around then to put some pressure on you.

No pressure.

Yeah. You know, part of this podcast is all about the world being in a difficult place and about human connection, creativity.

And so we always challenge our guests to go, what would you do about it if you could be king? What can we do to try to turn things around from the dark place we're at right now, do you think?

Well, I think more funding for the arts would help. Absolutely.

Thank you.

I honestly believe that arts, I mean, can make life much more enjoyable. I know it's tough everywhere.

And it would help if we got a little bit more recognition from the government or at least assistance from the government to tell these stories. Because Vancouver in particular is a very expensive place to put on a show or to make a movie or to live. Or to live.

I mean, it's ridiculous to rent a theater here in Vancouver. It costs you literally 10 to 15,000 a week on the low side. So I think there's a, there's, I think the government can help out more.

I wonder how we get that message out so.

Well, through our podcast to start.

Well, let me role play.

Okay.

With Aaron here. Yeah, I am a, I'm a Calgary oil man and I like Trump. Maybe we can, please, can we be a 51st state?

And I think that, I don't know, I buy what you're saying, Aaron. Like, what is that really going to do for my kids. What is funding the arts? Can you put that in a way that I could understand?

It's interesting that that argument was given to Ralph Klein when he was premier of Alberta and he did not cut the arts. He said, what it's going to cost you? You held up a can of beer and said that's what it's going to cost you on a monthly basis to help fund the arts.

One can of beer.

One can of beer per person. Per person, yeah. And he says, I'm not going to cut the arts. In fact, I'm going to increase it. He did not go the other way.

Did he say why?

He just felt it was not worth cutting because it actually gave back into the community more than anticipated, for sure.

Did they do the statistics?

Yes, they gave statistics. Yes, he did.

Now, is that a financial give back or something else?

Both. He said it's important for don't forget, like you spend a winter in Edmonton, you want hope. That's true.

So what else are you gonna, you know, so it really, you know, I'll.

Drink a lot of those beers that we drink.

And don't forget a lot of the oil people, they fund theaters, they give donations to theater. Certainly in Calgary there's a couple big theaters that get big donations.

So I would not say that all just because you're in the oil or a rancher, that you're not going to enjoy the arts. I think you might just help out. And I think Calgary's famous for that. You know, Vertigo theater had a couple shows there.

We had sponsors that were oil business, for sure. For sure. Absolutely.

Well, what the arts does, is it. We talked about, you know, art imitating life, life imitating art. It gives us a sense of a mirror. We can see ourselves.

That's what I found in the replacement wife is so many people at the end of the play came up to me and said, thank you so much. And they were thanking you as the playwright because it allowed them to express their grief, their loss, their love, their connection, memories.

It brought up for people that have moved through their life who they were touched by. So the play gave them a touchstone to process emotions.

Yeah. And you know, honestly, I wouldn't have been able to complete that play if I wouldn't have gotten a kidney transplant just before writing it.

And from the director's husband,.

That's just such an interesting thread. Tell us a bit more about that.

Well, I mean, I needed a transplant right after Diana passed away. I got Covid. But I do have the same disease Neil Simon had, which was kidneys slowly shutting down because of cysts forming on him.

So it's not an uncommon disease. But I needed a transplant quite bad.

This is her husband.

Her husband, also a director and directed one of my shows. And not only did it match in every category and subcategory, but he had a double artery, and I had a double artery. So our kidney.

And then we found out our fathers came from the same village in Ukraine. Our mothers went to the same high school in Yorkton, Saskatchewan.

Unbelievable.

So then the doctor said, you guys better get your DNA checked. And we checked our DNA, and we weren't related. But he found out, of course, he had a daughter he had no idea about.

And she was 44, and she was from my mother's hometown of Yorkton, Saskatchewan. And she had two kids. He didn't know he got somebody pregnant. And then I met her. I met her two summers ago, and her cousin married my cousin.

Oh, my God, my head is just spinning. Yorkton, a small town, right? Everybody marries everybody else's cousin there. But. So, anyways, I was alive. I got hope from the kidney transplant.

And there's my bumps from dialysis on my arm. I'm pointing to here.

I can see.

And I was very fortunate only to be on dialysis for eight weeks, which would set me up for the transplant. And after the transplant, I recovered and wrote, finished the play, which was the first draft. So I got hope of.

And certainly my donor didn't have to give me a kidney.

And I think in a way that represents for me not only a wonderful opportunity to keep living and creating, but also to reconnect with the world creatively. And I'm forever thankful to him for giving me that chance, because I probably wouldn't be sitting here.

The arts is really good at making lifelong connections, because once you experience, you go through a play together, it's life changing in some ways. I'm not talking about the ones that bomb, of course, the ones that bomb might be less life changing. It might be life changing in another way.

But I was very fortunate, actually, to finish both. I finished Waterproof at the time of my transplant and also applied so.

Incredible. And you're right about the bonding, because Bill, Mim, Alvin and Ella and I, I felt really close with them.

And I feel close with you and Johnna and, you know, and Colin. And Colin. Well, Colin, what a great, interesting person he had. He was the voiceover guy for the WestJet part. But you make new friends.

And so even if the play bombs, you know, I remember being 16 in a play that we kind of wrote ourselves, and I don't think many people came to it, but I made such good friends through that, who've carried me through and all of the plays I've been in and all of the theaters that I've participated with. I have connections all over the world through people who have come and gone through theater.

So you're saying theater actually unites people.

Theater unites people. Writing unites people. But it's the stories. There's so many different ways to unite people, but the arts is one of them. Painting unites people.

Well, you know, behind the mic there, Aaron just pointed at me.

What did you do?

Theater unites people. But that triggered me to go. Story unites people. I mean, so much. What we're about is story, right?

Yeah, it is.

Theater is story to me.

And we need it. We need to get connected. We need story, don't we?

In our martyrs.

It just fills my heart with so much passion when I think about that. That.

And AI does not deliver that story,.

You know, not yet.

Oh, And I would argue that it never will.

But I like your argument. I like your argument, and I'm hoping you're right about your argument. So.

A neuroscientist I read recently, too, said there's more power in one neuron than there is an entire city of computers, you know, so how is that ever going to match? His argument was never.

Yes. Except I put on a VR helmet once, and I was in a shark tank with a VR helmet, and that was pretty life changing.

Yeah.

You know what? I did one of those with a video game, and it amped up my fight or flight.

And I just wanted to kill everything in my path because it was one of those things and I was gonna win at all costs. And it really brought out my competitive streak.

And I thought, ooh, I don't know if this is such a good thing, especially for young kids who don't have their prefrontal cortex online.

There are some issues.

There can be an issue with that on the other side, can't it?

There are some issues.

Maybe it's just an issue with me.

But it's interesting. You say story changes things, and I feel that some of our usual ways of getting stories, which. The first one was radio.

I mean, we had a lot of Stories on radio that had a giant audience. Anybody with a radio could.

Radio plays.

Radio plays were a huge deal. Yes. And those writers moved to TV and film afterwards, which was why we had so much dialogue for a while. Chatty films of the 30s.

But I do feel that there's an opportunity in radio still for us to give those. Get back to dramas on radio, or.

They're doing that on podcasts now.

That's what I feel. That's the next big thing. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, you'll have to write one.

Yeah. That's another venue. I have to.

What is your next endeavor?

I don't know. Right now, I'm sort of in between projects. I feel I want to go back to illustration for a while, but I do know there's another play in me.

I just don't know where. It's like. I like the idea of seeing where it's going to end up. Right. So that's partly what I'm thinking of usually, is where's the audience for this?

I think on a bigger scale, rather than I'm just gonna write a play and nobody will ever see it, it's just gonna occupy my head. I would rather it have an audience. So I think first of audience, and then I start putting it together.

Well, the audience is a sounding board,.

So that gives you creative impetus. Yeah. I'm in that gray area of trying to figure out what audience or where I'm gonna go next.

I'll come to you in your dreams. You'll dream about it.

Let's have impact and let's give hope, shall we?

Yes. Through stories.

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, I love that. Aaron says writing isn't just about filling space. It's about creating depth.

And you feel that in his work. It's visual, it's vulnerable, and it gives you space to process your own emotions through story.

Because the best writing doesn't just tell you something.

It lets you feel it, see it, and sometimes even hear through it.

And maybe that's the difference, huh? Between content and connection.

At Ignite My Voice, that's what we're all about. We help you express what's real, not just what's rehearsed.

Because your voice is powerful, your words carry weight, and that's where you can make a difference.

So book a session with one of our talent developmenter coaches and discover what you're truly capable of. Visit ignitemyvoice.com ignite my voice. Becoming unstoppable. Your voice is your superpower. Use it.