Seymour Irons on Re-seeing Space and Redeveloping Scripts
The 2024 Kick & Push Festival is well underway with their upcoming closing weekend ending on a bang. With just over half the programming still remaining in its final days, wonderfully fabulous artists and their innovative creations will be leaving their mark on the Tett Centre, Cedar Island, City Park, and more. Amongst them is Seymour Irons—a man who wears many artistic hats but we’ll dive into that later—and his show Sooth. After working on Sooth in last year’s festival under the title Sooth Shivers, Irons is back for another round of residency with the Kick & Push to further workshop the show.
I sat down with him over Zoom to chat about Sooth, but also his play reading happening in late August. Through participating in a residency with b current Performing Arts, Irons has been able to turn his previously written one-act play into a full-length script titled Family Container.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How has Sooth been going so far?
It’s been really good, very fun… We’ve been getting into the body, doing a lot of meditative work to connect with the elements of air, water, fire, and earth. And then heading over to City Park and starting to build choreography and seeing how those elements have been poking out the space.
Have all the rehearsals or the development been outside?
We try to do half days by starting at the Tett Centre and then the other half going to City Park. A few of the days have been all at the Tett Centre. I will say, for site-specific work, being outside of the space is challenging sometimes. But I found that we were the most comfy moving, I want to say, indoors because it was cooler and there weren’t random people walking by. But then, once we were actually in the space though, that’s when we’re able to get real and properly timed movements.
Could you give a brief description of what Sooth is?
Sooth, initially titled Sooth Shivers, is a site-specific movement piece. By movement piece, we blend a bit of embodiment by welcoming elements into the body to do theatrical movements and a bit of, I want to say, contemporary dance that’s a bit more lyrical and flowing. We kind of find this intersection between the two of those types of expressions in the body and try to express how the elements interact with the space through our bodies in the space… Sooth is about re-seeing space through the eyes of elements.
Very cool. And this has been a show in residence since August sixth?
I started August fourth. The movers [Felicia Holmes and Sierrah Zawacki] joined me August sixth… This year is a bit more intensive than it was last year. Not because we have less time or anything, or because of the team…
Last year, when we first did Sooth with Kick & Push, we did just the elements of water and, I believe, earth. This year we decided, let’s try to do all of the elements and let’s see how that works. It is a bit more of an ask on our bodies and our senses to try to perceive these and embody them, but I do think that this one will be a lot more rewarding in terms of what we end up sharing and presenting.
I was taking a peek at your social media just before we hopped on to this call and you described “designing movement”, “site-scouting”, and “costume building”. Could you speak to the site-scouting and costume building?
Site-scouting happened on our first day [at City Park] after doing a bit of getting into the body… There’s some trees that are there that give us this sense of a nice dark alley where we almost landed, but then the space that we ended up clinging to is the old—and I don’t know which of these evil men this statue belonged to, if it was Sir. John A. or Winston Churchill… But it’s since been removed and there’s this clearing where we just have a platform with some canons and some trees behind it, and we were like, this space is dead. And it used to represent something that wasn’t the most healthy… And I do think that maybe it is time to start creating some new narratives down in City Park.
In terms of costume designing, it has been a little crazy, I will say. I am doing all of the costume-creating myself… We have a water sprite, or fairy, costume as well as a fire sprite, slash, fairy costume. Both of them kind of blend different types of fabrics and try to represent, as well, the elements in each costume.
You really are a man of many talents: performer, producer, costume designer, and this is a really good segue into chatting about how you’re also a playwright, and you have an upcoming play reading in Toronto.
It’s actually in Kingston, Ontario. So the company that I’m a part of for the residency is a Toronto based company—b current. Thankfully, because of my distance, they brought me into their residency program and said, okay, you can produce in Kingston…
I did want to bring the play to diverse audiences—we don’t necessarily have that in Kingston—but I do think that trying to put forward a play—and I was able to find an almost all BIPOC cast in Kingston, which is very rare to me and there’s ten actors in this play—but I do think that producing something like this might invite more diverse audiences to feel more comfortable producing their work here and telling their stories…
The play follows Tara. She is a single Black mother who’s living in a women’s abuse shelter in Toronto, Ontario. It is her, with her five children, with little time left in the shelter. It sounds like a drama but it actually is a bit more of a comedy. It’s hard times but we’re looking at how this family is very resilient and at times, even uses comedy to heal.
When did the residency start?
That started in the spring of this year. But full transparency, I have been writing this play since 2019. I first started writing it in a playwriting course at Queen’s, and I have been workshopping it, trying to get it to this point to see if it could walk. And this public reading is finally my tester to say, “Okay, how do audiences respond here?”
When you started the residency, did you have the entire play done and then you went from there?
I had the play written as only one act and now it has been shifted and redeveloped to be a full-length play.
How has the residency supported you in helping develop it into a two-act play?
One of the biggest helps has been providing some funding for this project. Being able to pay actors, to be able to get them into Zoom meetings first to do some readings of it so then I can hear how it sounds with voices. And then having some time here to then not work in the field for a second so I can actually write… And then this next stage here, being able to then bring actors in once more to actually workshop it in a physical space with each other. So far they have provided a lot of help with funding as well as marketing…
Family Container, before I got into this residency, I almost started developing as a TV show. Then a funder pulled out and I just thought the project was over and this story was never going to be told but then I was like—a year later—we have to try to get our foot out there, we have to get something created that was written. Something that was written needs to be produced is how I was feeling. I started reaching out to some people, b current, and some other theatre companies, and they finally responded back which gave this project some life again.
Is there anything I haven’t asked that you’d love to tell me?
It’s nice to have Felicia Holmes part of the team again. It’s their second year in residence. We initially met in an embodiment class at Queen’s. So when we were doing the first iteration of the project last year, I felt like, “Okay Felicia, you gotta be a part of this, you’re one of the only other movers around. And we’ve had very similar training. I need to work with you here.” And then when it came to second year, I was like, “Hey, Sooth?” And they were like, “Yes! Definitely Sooth.” …
This is my first time working with Sierrah in a movement capacity. I had seen them do a performance earlier this year in FOLDA which inspired me to possibly reach out for this project… Sierrah has a lot more classical training in dance so it’s been very helpful being able to take some of their expertise…
It feels really good to be producing these projects… Earlier this year I ran into some issues with [a Kingston arts company] where my diversity and my ability to work there honestly clashed with each other, where I ended up leaving for issues to do with racial biases. Thankfully there has been training that’s happened since but that pivotal shift in my artistic career to relationship to Kingston really inspired me this year to make sure that we allow ourselves to still create as an artist here and we don’t let any of these experiences kind of suppress us. And on top of that, I really want this work to hopefully—I can’t force people to be inspired—but to be able to tell diverse voices. Yes, you can make art here! Don’t fall into a little bubble. Keep trying regardless of what kind of obstacles come your way.
Seymour Irons is a Black multi disciplinary artistic producer and spiritual advisor, currently completing his graduate degree at Queen’s University.
‘Sooth’, presented by the Kick & Push Festival, runs at City Park today, August 15, 2024, and tomorrow, August 16, 2024. Find more information here.
Irons’ play reading of ‘Family Container’ is August 23, 2024 at the Tett Centre. More information can be found here.
