This interview is a part of a carte blanche magazine blog and conversation series highlighting writers/creators whose practice is rooted in collaboration, hybridity, interdisciplinarity and transformation. Please note that this interview has been edited down from a two-hour conversation between Gabe and Erin.

ERIN:

I’m happy to have you be part of this! carte blanche’s motto is: “There is more than one way to tell a story.” The blog series is focused on interdisciplinary creators who write from a variety of different disciplines and who focus on collaboration. I’ll be transparent in saying those are huge values of mine too. So I’m excited! All that being said, my first question for you is: Why do you write?

GABE:

Yeah, it’s such a big question. I’d say right now that I write to resolve the big questions or conflicts I’m contending with. It’s really about how I’m looking at the things I can’t really change. The things I feel powerless with. I tend to then focus on this in writing because I’m not good at letting things go. I write because I can’t let things go, but when I write it, it helps me to let it go a little bit. I guess because then I feel like I’ve done something. It definitely comes down to taking an issue or a problem that I’m feeling emotionally, philosophically, or societally, and then trying to make something happen with it so that it doesn’t just feel like despair. I think it’s a way to avoid that kind of nihilism that I feel we’re so susceptible to these days.

When I started writing after theatre school, I mean I was writing thinking there’s no roles out there for someone like me. It felt like my options were either struggle to get performance work or write my own. It started utilitarian in that way and then I’ve found that gratification comes from writing for its own sake, by exploring and sharing hard questions.

ERIN:

Yeah, that’s a wonderful answer. There’s something I obviously connect with around having an internal struggle that you can’t immediately solve in the flawed systems we’re in. Thinking of art as creating spaces of possibility and hope. Perhaps spaces of a kind of lawlessness or anarchy too. I don’t think stories are a benign thing at all. I think they’re the bedrock of our lives and systems.

GABE:

Well, in a way, I think if something is on my chest and it feels like it’s suffocating me for whatever reason, if it’s a big question that I have to unburden myself of by burdening the audience…I don’t like to think of it as a burden necessarily, let me turn this around…. It’s a question…that I felt so alone in—but actually, there may be a universality to the question. It may speak to a specific experience that others can relate to.

Writing is my way of dealing with this wondering: Why does nobody else see this? Does nobody else feel this? The experience of writing can be so solitary, but I feel like when it comes to putting it out there...it’s the reminder that there isn’t this void. There is a world that the question and its story is responding to and people can take that and move with it. It can incite something.

I think I’m drawn to theater because that’s the form where you get that direct exchange. In theater I guess there has always been this feeling of ok, we’re here. We’re gathering.

ERIN:

I think performance can be writing. I think conversation can be writing and research. What are some tools you use to be inspired in your writing practice? What is involved in your writing practice?

GABE:

I think it varies, but I’ve done quite a bit of working in adaptation. So definitely, I think responding to specific works is something I do that propels me.

That and the dramaturgical process. The conversation and the feedback I receive in dramaturgy. I do really appreciate that. I think there’s a skill to being able to process feedback—being able to take in what’s important and illuminating and responding to what doesn’t resonate. Discourse is a very helpful thing in re-establishing what I do want to do and do not want to do with my writing.

I also tend to have reference points. Even for pieces that aren’t adaptations. Like for Eva in Rio, I was thinking a lot about Mother Courage and Brecht’s scene structure.

Gabe Maharjan in Eva in Rio at the MAI, photograph by Joseph Ste-Marie

ERIN:

I feel like it is a very individualistic view in our Western society to assume that something needs to be completely original. You know, I think there’s something beautiful about an accumulation, a kind of snowball of inspirations that involve conversations, as you said, and research, and other media.

GABE:

Other people have said—you know—upon reading or seeing my work: “Oh, this made me think of this movie or this book,” and if it’s something that I haven’t seen then I go and look into that. So even if it wasn’t a starting point, it becomes a part of the map and you lay out that map—that lineage—through feedback.

That being said, around discourse, I don’t feel I need to take in all of it or share everything. I appreciate elusiveness. I think that it’s perhaps undervalued. I try not to prescribe what my work means.

ERIN:

It’s interesting...the point around elusiveness. I don’t think being a writer or creator, even if you’re writing something personal, I don’t think that means people have an entitled access to you, you know? I think that access comes with trust and shouldn’t be an expectation. Boundaries and the beauty of leaving something up to interpretation too—that it doesn’t have to all be so clearly defined. I am interested in work that isn’t completely alienating, there is an invitation, but it doesn’t cleanly give you all of the answers. I think that’s exciting.

GABE:

I think that’s the key part. Not giving the answers, but offering the questions.

I’m not writing fables with morals, you know? It’s worth questioning: What are you trying to ask your audience?

ERIN:

Yeah, how are you connecting? This gives me a perfect segue into my next question which is: What are some questions and subjects that emerge for you? That often circle in your brain? The things you find yourself returning to.

GABE:

This is not specifically a question but more of a theme. A theme of my work has been the dispelling, which is a part of my own internal process—like figuring out what I’m learning and unlearning. You know, like: Why have I always thought that? Focusing on gender a lot. In one play, it might be like: How has society convinced me that gender variance from the binary is a novelty or contemporary phenomenon against natural order? Why have I grown up thinking this? It comes back to dispelling because I’m like: Why have I always seen it this way? Why haven’t I questioned this? Whether it comes down to gender or money or education, thinking about: What do we accept as norms and where do norms come from? Humans have been alive longer than these norms. You know, I’m coming up on 25 years of living and everything that I understand about the world has only been informed by these 25 years. And for most of that time I wasn’t even really questioning what was being shown to me.

ERIN:

I think it’s important to acknowledge how the role of story is so central to how these norms get created. A lot of the times norms, especially harmful norms, feel like uninterrogated stories to me. I think there’s a big site of hope, generosity, activism, and community possibility for art and storytelling in deconstructing calcified and harmful narratives. I think it’s a mistake to assume that stories are mere entertainment. They really have a lot of hold on our lives.

It’s an interesting thing, moving into adulthood, and being like: What were the pillars? What were the stories I grew up with and where they come from? Which ones do I actually really not believe in? Which ones do I want to interrogate? Which ones do I want to rewrite and how do I rewrite them? What does it look like to rewrite with other people? To be in collaboration in the interrogation—in the act of writing and rewriting.

I know that collaboration as a theater artist is a huge part of your practice. I wanted to speak especially to your experience of working with Merlin [Simard] on E-TRANSFERS. I was wondering what you learned there and would really love to hear from you. What does collaborating with another person open up in your practice?

GABE:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I want to say that, just to your first point on norms, it’s this idea of bringing awareness to the stories we tell ourselves—those that have been accepted as true. It’s challenging them. A lot of those questions end up being things I only figure out after a first or second draft. I don’t really know the questions until I’ve presented them. Like—oh, right, that’s what I’m fixated on and writing about!

For collaboration, with Merlin, we’ve known each other for almost eight years. Coming right out of theatre school, we produced our first project; it was ad hoc—no funding, slapdash, and it was really fun. From there, we both independently started our writing practices and eventually we started talking about themes we both wanted to explore and that ended up being the economics of trans life. How does money play into trans life? Making money, spending money. Currency in different forms.

Over time, of course we’ve both made compromises but it’s always felt more like rediscovering what we wanted to do together—redefining the mission together. I think it’s really worth thinking about the relationships that you build. It’s like, if it is a new relationship, how do you have your first date? What is dating like as co-writers? What are your strengths? Your needs? What excites you about each other? You define what your strengths are, what your needs are because whatever you’re going to work on is going to be a product of both of your working styles. And so if you don’t get to a place where you know what you enjoy in each other’s approaches, then you might not get to something that highlights all the strengths you bring together.

Video of E-TRANSFERS by Gabe Maharjan and Merlin Simard

ERIN:

In terms of collaboration—continued collaboration with Merlin. Do you have an upcoming project? Are you continuing your work together?

GABE:

Yeah, so we operate under a collective that we recently titled bigT and we focus on trans narratives. We have a few projects in development. Over the past year we had some funding and we were able to interview a couple dozen folks from across the country and around the world to talk about their experiences as trans people. All of them are from completely different walks of life so having that outreach has fueled a lot of research. So we’re hoping to expand E-TRANSFERS into a kind of sibling piece. It’s a slow process.

That’s something I’ve learned over time. It’s very important for me to get away from a piece. But we’re continually developing that and then there’s another piece we’re starting to develop with Theatre Passe Muraille through their Buzz series. It’s a project using VR to create an individualized performance experience of trans euphoria.

ERIN:

That’s incredible. I didn’t know that! That’s wonderful.

GABE:

I’m really excited by it, and it’s funny because it was, again this talk about collaboration, Merlin just pitched it. Merlin has been working on VR more than I have and they pitched it to TPM, like: “Hey, it’s this idea of gender euphoria and VR.” And that was it, so we started defining it: Are we writing this for one person? That was a big thing, like, what does this mean to not have a public audience? To write for a single audience member.

ERIN:

The intimacy of that is stunning, vulnerable, and intimate. The fact that someone could do that within the comfort of their home…I think there’s something really really special in that.

GABE:

It is very much about offering that immersive experience, that intimacy, but it’s still a performance. That’s what I’m most interested in. What does it mean for this person to have an opportunity to perform gender in an unbound context? It could be so many different things. We’re not deciding what the story has to be. We’re investigating what that story could be for one person. It’s still super early development but I’d love to see how we could start creating these experiences for several people, like a collection of trans fantasies.

We all have access to vibrant imaginations. I want to make sure that we can be a little bit ahead of the curve for the trans community so that we can really make sure we create and platform our own space in this because you can’t expect Zuckerberg to do that for us or anything. So yeah.

ERIN:

That’s so exciting. There’s just…there’s pleasure and joy and hope and generosity and empathy in this. I can’t wait to see it unfold. I just think that’s an incredible project. The exchange, the collaboration, the questions, the trust that’s going to occur through working with this one person. And then as you said, maybe several others so it can be like building a foundation of trust and intimacy, and then reflecting that in the work.That’s great, really great.

So something I’m very interested in, with people’s writing practices, especially when it comes to performance too because it is embodied, is—when you’re dealing with sensitive or personal subject matter, How do you take care of yourself and others?

GABE:

I don’t think I’d have any definite answers.It’s a huge conversation of safety, you know.
How we express needs is a really big challenge. It’s all about communication. Kid gloves aren’t going to change it. Like we are touching things that are going to be sensitive. We can acknowledge that we’re going into dangerous territory and we need to have ways we can tap out and really lay down the groundwork of what it means to approach these subjects.

Merlin often uses the term “heat” when we’re writing. Heat keeps us warm and it’s exciting but then you have to be careful because you don’t want to burn yourself. Setting out a process and defining expectations is important. With an audience it is a harder thing to define but I don’t ever think discomfort should be a reason to turn away from something. If you want to present a show like Don’t Read The Comments for instance, which deals with sexual assault and consent, we hired a counsellor who could be there if someone needed to leave the room to process. Some productions may need a budget line to accommodate hiring this person. And not that it’s so simple to just hire someone and say “we’re safe,” but it’s always worth looking at how we’re using a budget to invest in the wellbeing of the artists, the audience, and, ultimately, the art.

ERIN:
Having your budget reflected in your values feels very important. Speaking of theatre and collaboration and mediums, there is something really fascinating about asking an audience to physically be in the room with you. The relationship of the exchange shifts hugely from a poetry anthology to a play so the consideration around how they participate needs to be different.

GABE:

As an audience member I have very different expectations from television or cinema than I do from theatre. People aren’t as comfortable to walk out of the theater as they are to shut their laptop screen.They can decide right away, “oh this is not the kind of content I’m interested in,” so there’s less focus on content warnings… It’s interesting that, going back to your very initial question of “why do you write,” I write because I want to ask a question of the audience or have someone subvert their understanding of something, invite people to interrogate their worldview. I think, generally, people are more likely to contemplate an uncomfortable interrogation in a theatre than when streaming.

ERIN:

Ah, and sometimes someone’s only going to go there with you if there is trust or some degree of generosity and compassion to have for that knife of critical thinking. I feel like, what you were talking about in terms of safety and emotional safety translates to: How do you both provoke and care for your reader or audience? For instance, I love nonlinear story structures. I think there’s far too many linear story structures in the universe. If you make the expectations for engagement clear or generous, there is an invitation for people to engage in something different. If the invitation is never extended it runs the risk of unintentional alienation that could be overly self-indulgent or something. There needs to be a line to cast out I think.

GABE:

Yeah, and of course you don’t have to decide how they’re going to experience it, but you’ve got to think about what you’re trying to offer them.

ERIN:

I wanted to go back to the the idea of how your background in performance, and direction impact your writing practice.

GABE:

All disciplines inform each other, enhancing in some way. Through the lens of performance, I think about what needs to be defined for an actor and what can be left to discover. And the stage directions, what does a director need? Suzan-Lori Parks is someone who inspires me in this way because she says so much with just the dialogue and how it’s spaced. I’ve avoided stage directions completely and I’ve had other experiences where I write out all of the stage directions only to cut most of them later. I love writing and having other people come to it with the focus on their discipline(s). To me that’s one of the most exciting parts of the transformation. There’s always this, the eternal battle of Imposter Syndrome, of
course, but I think once you kind of open a space and trust in the process, you can set things up right. Especially in the development process before getting to a production, resisting the temptation not to have something finished right away. You can test the waters to see what sings.

ERIN:

When performing your own words, is it hard to not continue the revision and editing process as you’re performing?

GABE:

With Merlin and E-TRANSFERS, we went back to the video performance and transcribed our partially improvised performances. We never had time to workshop the text so the performances were so much more interesting than what we’d written on paper. Everything was moving. The script now has all our ums and buts and ahs in it. The text was informed by performance more than anything. And with the Geordie commission (From The Stars in The Sky To The Fish In The Sea) I will be performing in the play I wrote. Unlike with E-TRANSFERS, I’m not playing the lead and it’s a large cast…and I can’t improvise my lines!

ERIN:
Performing in your own work you’ll get a different kind of aperture or viewpoint on it.

GABE:

Yeah, exactly. And it’s the first time a company is taking a script I wrote and staging it. Letting it be taken by producers, a director and designers that are having all these meetings without me. I’ve been offered to see the designs and I was kind of like well, if I’m going to perform in it, I feel like I should find out with all the other performers. So there is a bit of letting go. Like, when am I no longer allowed to touch the script? What does it mean to separate my mission as an actor and as a playwright? I didn’t write the character that I’m playing knowing that I’d be performing.I will be learning my own lines. Lines I have written.

ERIN:

How meta is it that you’re so directly collaborating with yourself?

GABE:

Yeah, yes. And in a sense, a past version of myself too.

ERIN:

What a unique position to be in. To create that distance between your words and the performance. Performing and associating the words intimately with particular memories of writing too. Streams nourishing and branching off. One of my questions in terms of the Geordie Theatre adaptation with Kai Cheng Thom for From The Stars in The Sky to the Fish in the Sea is- How do you find yourself in collaboration with the voices of other artists in a book form like this? What translations and creations take place?

GABE:

The process was really about asking—how does this live on stage?

It’s an illustrated book so it’s not just Kai Cheng’s words but all the illustrations by Wai-Yant Li and Kai Yun Ching. The images inspired the script as much as the text in the book did. The relationship between the words and the images.

From the cover of the book by Kai-Cheng Thom, illustrated by Wai-Yant Li and Kai Yuh Ching

With Kamala, my adaptation of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, it is in the public domain so I am not asking for his permission. It’s a different relationship to adaptation and to the work. I’m thinking of it more as a response to instead of an adaptation of.

I’m gonna go grab the copy of From The Stars in the Sky…that I have over here.

Yeah, because, yeah…it’s beautiful.

(Gabe shows Erin From The Stars In The Sky To The Fish in The Sea through the Zoom screen.)

GABE:

These little birds with—with antlers…

ERIN:

Is that a peacock, like, peacock feather?

GABE:

Yeah, over here you have the peacock.

ERIN:

Ah, the little mini kettle. Oh!

GABE:

With a smiley face. Further back there’s the bathtub, which also has a beautiful smiling face.

ERIN:

Oh, I love it.

GABE:

It’s just been like…this process of reading the book for the first time and crying because I was like: How did I not have this book growing up? I needed it and then just being able to get into it and get into it and get into it and create from it… let it inform questions, like what happens if we have the moon and the sun both in the sky at the same time—what does that mean? Does it redefine day and night?

ERIN:

The process of From The Stars in The Sky to The Fish in The Sea sounds very magical. How did your process in writing Kamala start?

GABE:

Ah, just over four years ago. It was the only book I brought with me to Cuba, thinking I wouldn’t have time to read while on the go. Well, I went alone and I ended up having plenty of time to read and re-read it while I was out and about in the sun or while on the bus. I eventually managed to find copies of Jane Eyre, the simplified English edition, and a poetry collection by Margaret Atwood with the Spanish translation on every other page. Those were my three books.

Anyways, I wrote some poems on my phone after reading Siddhartha. I shared one with a friend and she said it could be a song. It’s something I kept going back to.

Kamala is treated so inconsequentially in the book and I decided I could treat Siddhartha the same. Like he’s just there. We don’t need to linger on him or his lens. I kept thinking to myself, what is unresolved in this?

A WRITING PROMPT!

For anybody who is figuring out what they want to write about, connect to the questions:

Is there anything that you keep coming back to? A book, a movie, a song, doesn’t matter.
Is it because you love it? Is it because it’s really complicated? Or because it scares you?

If it sticks with you, then work from there.

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