“The Best Plays Ask Questions”: Janet Kish on Playwriting
Janet Kish has worn many hats in Canadian theatre, including playwright, director, and educator. She spent years teaching high school drama, and her impact has echoed far beyond the classroom. Many of her former students have gone on to build careers in the arts, with Kish cheering them on.
This year, one of her plays is being staged at the Baby Grand theatre as part of the upcoming TK Fringe Festival. 1969 is a coming-of-age story about two girls hitchhiking to Montreal to protest the war in Vietnam. It’s being produced by Pub Shed Productions, a new Kingston-based theatre company founded by Rachel MacDonald, who happens to be Kish’s former student.
While Kish wrote the script, she stepped back from the production process this time. “I’m letting them take creative license,” she says. “I have directed a lot of my own plays, so giving one away is relatively new and a little uncomfortable. But I have so much faith in Rachel [MacDonald], the director of the play. She’s an incredibly skilled and talented theatre creator, so I have a feeling I’m going to walk out of the show with brand new eyes.”
Pub Shed’s focus is on staging original work by Canadian playwrights and Kish is thrilled to have 1969 included. “I was honoured they wanted to do this script. Their cast and production team are very experienced and artistic adults. I’m excited to see what they’ve done with it.”
In our conversation, we chat about the story behind 1969, a drama teacher’s essential theatre skills, and the art of relinquishing creative control. As Kish puts it, “the best plays ask questions.” And this one just might.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What inspired you to write this play?
I taught high school drama for many years, retired in 2012, and thanks to social media, I have stayed in touch with many of my students. Many of them have remained in theatre, whether professionally or as amateur practitioners and that always delights me. One of my former students is now a drama teacher. He was asking about plays that I had written for my students, because he was looking for something for his students. We talked about a few of the plays I had done, and for whatever reason, I flippantly said, ‘Oh, I’ll write something for you.’ So that was the inspiration. The idea had occurred to me before, because I had always wanted to write about what it was like to be a young person in the 1960s and 1970s. And there’s a parallel now with world politics and war, and so that became my theme, semi-autobiographical.
It’s an exciting story. It’s 1969, there are two teenage girls, and there’s a road trip. Could you tell us more?
In that era, we hitchhiked everywhere. I was one of those rebellious hippie kids who hitchhiked across the country, so that greatly influenced my desire to write about hitchhiking back then. And of course, the Vietnam War was going on at that time. I was also very involved as a 16-year-old social warrior, protesting against the war. So in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held a bed-in in Montreal. I had nothing to do with that. I never went. But these two characters, who don’t know each other well, are schoolmates, and they have decided to hitchhike to Montreal for the weekend to support this bed-in.
One of the characters is a musician, and she has composed a song that she wants John Lennon to hear. Of course, hitchhiking along the 401 from Toronto to Montreal is not a direct route. There are a lot of stops and a lot of characters you meet on the way, one of whom is a young American who has been drafted into the army. Much of the story revolves around the concepts of war, patriotism, peace, and various opinions. Even though I’m biased, I tried to show other opinions. I believe, as a drama teacher, a playwright, and a director, the best plays ask questions; they don’t give you answers. When I leave a play thinking, “Oh, how do I feel about that?” or maybe my perspective changes a bit, I think that’s a really strong production. That’s what I try to do in my writing.
There are some personal threads and connections between your life experiences, and this play. How do you work with these connections?
It’s kind of fun to merge and fuse the two. I learned a long time ago that if I had multiple characters in a show, I didn’t want them to sound the same. I think this is one of the traps that young writers fall into. The characters all speak with the same voice. And, of course, it’s the author’s voice. And by that, I mean that they have the same rhythm and the same energy in their speech. What I learned for my own writing is to identify elements of myself. So, is it the school teacher in me? Is it the authoritarian? Is it the wild teenager in me? Because we all have various personalities depending on who we interact with and what the situation is. I’ve found that a great device to individualize my characters so that they’re different, and it works. I believe that those who know me well will recognize me in my writing. I think they may go, ‘Is that real? Did she do that?’
You’re not as directly involved with how this show appears on stage. As someone who teaches theatre, do you find it easier or harder to let go and let it be done?
Oh, definitely harder. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 40 years, so I think I know best. I know I don’t, but I have strong opinions on how things should be done. So I just swallow that urge to take control and to be the super director overseer, and just enjoy it.
Even if it’s my play that I directed, once the actors are on stage, we have no control, and of course, the actors don’t either. You have to go with the flow because every audience is different, so the energy and outcome will be different. It’s like that old saying, ‘You never step into the same river twice.’ Well, you never do the same show twice. It’s always different. Every time somebody coughs, I think, ‘Oh no,’ because coughing in the audience is a sign of boredom, and once someone starts coughing, others follow. I’m sitting there and I’m going, ‘Oh no, they didn’t laugh at that joke.’ It’s hard. I guess we’re masochists, because I wouldn’t miss the show.
I once acted in a play where, after so many rehearsals, we forgot it was even funny until someone new laughed during a dress rehearsal. Sometimes, you’re so deeply involved that you don’t see it how the audience would experience it.
Absolutely! And I haven’t done a play as a director or as a playwright or as a person involved in the show that somewhere I don’t go ‘Why did I choose this play? I don’t like this play.’ … You reach the point where you’re so drenched, saturated with the play. And then it becomes a surprise when you get on stage and the audience is reacting, and you think, ‘Oh yeah.’
What do you hope the audience thinks about when leaving?
How can we make it better? What can we do? If we give up, we fail. So I hope that people will walk out and think, ‘What can I do to make the world a better place?’
Janet Kish is a Toronto-based playwright and theatre elder whose work is deeply rooted in the ideals and activism of the 1960s. After a 33-year career as a Drama teacher with the TDSB, she continues to inspire and engage through writing, directing, and adjudicating.
‘1969’ plays in the TK Fringe as part of The Kick & Push Festival August 7-17, 2025. Tickets and more information can be found here. Find more details about Pub Shed Productions here.
