Hosts Nick Watson (@fivestergram) and Brie Watson (@briewats0n) are back after an unplanned hiatus to chat plans for the podcast going forward including new segments like: what’s filling the tank, what’s draining the bucket and what are we working on as 2024 comes to a close.
Nick’s Update:
Finished “Infinite Jest”
No more contests until his 3 books are edited
Trying out new “Scrivener” software
Brie’s Update
Joined Assembly Improv team: P!sstank
Tuesday Night Improv coming to Spotlight in St. Catharines
Struggles: Balancing resources
RESOURCES:
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Our guest in this episode is mustard and smoked-meat wizard Zane Caplansky, founder of Caplanksy’s Deli & purveyor of fine mustards. When Nick had the idea of interviewing a chef to discuss the artistic elements of food and cooking, Zane immediately came to mind. As it turns out, the struggles associated with balancing artisanal meats and mustards and attempting to find balance in life are huge. Six-figure-legal-fees huge.
And yet, Zane is probably the most optimistic and hopeful guests we’ve had the pleasure of speaking with – and in the current political climate, that doesn’t seem so easy to do, right? So, grab some pickles, dip ’em in some tasty Caplansky mustard & enjoy our journey strugglin’ on with Zane Caplanksy.
Your Creative Tips
Success & Failure, Cooking, Management, Work-Life Balance, Family
The irony of this episode is that Nick’s “Word of the Year” for 2024 is EDIT. And it took Brie four months to edit this dang file. Maybe EDIT should have been both our words!
NEVERTHELESS. Here we are. It’s 2024. We’re the happiest new members of PodCavern. And we’re ready to set and tackle our goals in the struggly world of Arts & Entertainment in Canada for this new year. (Aware that we’re already in the second quarter of the new year!)
Jo Anne Tacorda is an actor, improviser, singer and one fifth of the popular sketch comedy troupe Big Chick Energy. In this episode of TCS, Brie and Nick find out what it was like to form a sketch troupe in the thick of Covid, what it takes to be part of the Hallmark “Christmasverse” and great tips along the way about embracing your inner-creative.
You’re going to love Jo Anne’s enthusiasm and it’ll leave you “pregnant” with possibilities for new creative projects!
I taught a class this term. An introduction to improv. At the end of the class, a few students; more than one, one would have been enough for this to be significant, but a few, mentioned that as a result of taking this class, they were feeling more “like themselves” than they had in a long time. They’d lost that feeling and this improv class brought them back home in themselves again.
I remember that reconnection.
I was in Ottawa after having completed my degree and a few work terms at various government departments and agencies. I’d become a serious political science major on a career path in the public service. I was losing, at least between 9-5 anyway, my sense of creativity and playfulness. I think I thought I was losing childish notions and this is what it meant to become an adult.
I reconnected with improv in Ottawa with a great little group of performers. After shedding a bit of the anxiety of meeting new people, I started to feel more comfortable in myself again, which thankfully set met on the path to now having the joyful privilege of watching folks like the students in my most recent class experience this reconnection in their own selves.
Over time though, and through a particularly transitional year I’ve been having, I feel like I’m once again losing touch with my own sense of creativity and playfulness. Assuming the role of teacher and director, I no longer have as many opportunities to play as I once had.
With the exception of one class in the new year, I want to take a short break from teaching and directing. I want to reconnect with my identify as a performer and writer. I want to follow that path and see where it leads. Hopefully back to big silly amounts of bursting joy. I’m sure the two roads will connect again soon down the path. But in the meantime, I’m deviating.
Have you ever had to stop on one path and try to make your way back to the one that feels more you? I’d love to hear about it.
It’s been a whole year since I got to shoot this incredibly fun commercial in SLOVENIA!
I’m starting to get the “On this Day 1 Year Ago” notifications on my Facebook page.
How do you measure, measure a year?
I also just got back from a fun weekend trip to see RENT at Stratford with some pals, so these two concepts of the passing of the year are at the front of my mind.
September feels like the beginning of the year. More than January. Probably because that’s when we used to go back to school. In the overall theme of this blog; Clown College Confessions – now that I’m no longer in school, but I’m still going abouts trying to make a living as a comedian, it feels necessary to blog about not just the good fun times, like European work-vacations and day-trips to the theatre.
This year has been pretty fucked up. I’m sure I’m not the only person working in the arts to point out the increase in costs of every day things, including interest rates on say… mortgages.., has had a huge impact on life over this past year. My partner Dan and I sold our house. A house that stayed on the market for nine months, every month slowly bleeding us out along the way. We’re temporarily relocated and lucky and grateful for it, but I can’t help thinking about other actors, musicians, writers, comedians out there having a really hard go given the state of everything right now who might not have so welcoming a support system.
Dan and I have both gone back to day-jobs to further fund our, you know, lives… as well as our artistic pursuits. We’re both lucky we’re able to do that too. I would love to know what it’s like to live somewhere where you don’t need to subsidize your artistic life with additional resources though.
I’ve been holding off writing about this for so long. Feeling ashamed for “not having made it” or worse, being a gigantic failure, but I think, maybe this is part of making it in the Canadian sphere of the arts? My company puts on shows, workshops, classes. I perform gigs. I shoot the odd commercial. (My kingdom — or I guess, my temporary kingdom for a TV gig!) It’s not Hollywood (Hollywood’s not Hollywood right now) – but I do get to do what I love. Sometimes.
I also feel weird because I like my new day job. Since going into comedy I felt the need to rebel against any Joe job that wasn’t performing comedy. But it turns out, there are other things in life that *gasp* are even more enjoyable for the soul than a damp comedy club basement. The crunch of stepping on an A-corn for example. Simple, and yet so satisfying.
This year looks a lot different than September of last year. But I think that’s OK. Although, I’d never shy away from another free trip to Europe if that’s ever in the cards again.
Sometimes being an artist is playing fun improv games amongst the barrels of one of the most reknown wineries in the whole country.
Other times it’s making tough decisions and turning down opportunities you know would be tremendous fun because you have to take care of yourself and your little life.
Heather Eyman is a fitness coach and improviser among many other things and in this episode, we see the path Heather took to narrow down on what’s important when there isn’t enough time to do everything and when you’re the kind of person who enjoys the abundance of what life has to offer.
We also ask her advice on how to fix Nick’s darn back! Find out what kind of tips she offers Nick, and all of us when it comes to making deposits into your body bank. (That’ll make more sense when you listen!)
Your Creative Tips
Health and Wellness, Fitness, Improv, Time Management
Our first episode in over four months! Why the break? Well you’ll just have to listen to the episode and find out. HA! Masters of the tease.
But really, it’s a doozy of an episode where Brie & Nick dig deep into some real talk about physical and mental health, motivation, relocation and the whole thing gets a little vulnerable.
It’s not all struggle though. There’s life. There’s travel. There’s a mandatory Maron reference!
Take a listen & let us know if it resonates with your journey.
All wordplay aside, this is a delightful and informative episode featuring Genevieve (Evie) Jones, playwright, actor, director and mom of Daphne. Evie’s located in the Niagara Region, and chats with Nick and Brie about starting out her artistic career in Niagara, spreading her wings beyond the peninsula and her parents, and the reason for her epic return.
Evie provides us with some deep insight into how the pandemic has been helpful to herself and many artists in finding focus, and the now existing struggle to maintain that focus as the world opens back up.
Writers will appreciate learning more about the process of writing and producing live plays in Canada and the evolution of the artist in motherhood.
Your Key Creative Tips:
Writing, Playwriting, Parenting, Theatre, Acting, Directing, Performing Arts in Niagara and Halifax.
Brie Watson 