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And ask yourself like, would that version of me be proud of who I am today? And the answer is yes, then you're doing something good. Amazing. That's, that's a very great way of explaining it because if I see myself five years back when I started my company Strugbits, I even still discuss it with my partners that, hey guys, have you ever thought that if I, if I would have told you guys that after five years we would have been here, what would you all say? And they were like, we would have said, come on, that's not possible.
And we just did it. So, it's. Hello everybody.
Today I had the opportunity to speak with Gabrielle Banwell, the artistic force behind Half Twin Theater. She has taken audience by storm with her innovative, emotionally charged productions from exploring the intricacies of womanhood to amplifying the voices of the forgotten. Her work inspires challenges and resonates deeply.
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Gabrielle, welcome to the show and thanks for joining in with us. Hi, thank you so much for having me. How are you, Gabrielle? I'm very, I'm doing very well.
How about you? I'm doing amazing. I'm doing amazing. It's, it's almost 9.50 PM over here.
What time is it over there? It's about 11.50 AM for me. Okay. So, you are an early waker or what? Oh yeah, absolutely.
I, even on my days off, I like to wake up at like 7, 7.30 because I feel like I'm most productive in the morning and especially being in Canada and it being winter or starting to be winter, it gets dark at four o'clock. And so, I try to optimize my daytime, literally my sunshine as much as I can. Amazing.
Amazing. Unfortunately, I cannot do that because, you know, when I'm, when I'm not traveling, I'm usually here in Pakistan. My main workforce is here in Pakistan and I have to deal with my oil clients like at the other side of the earth and I have to stay up for them.
So, I don't even remember when, when was the last time I woke up early. So, I usually wake up around 1 PM or 2 PM, which is very unhealthy, I know. And I sleep at 6 AM or 7 AM.
(2:31 - 2:58)
Oh, okay. I mean, at least you're getting some sleep. Yes, of course.
But you know, I heard somewhere that the sleep which you get at night, that is more beneficial one as compared to no matter how much you sleep in the morning. Yeah, I think it also depends on like the length of sleep that you have and when you start it as well. Like, uh, my, my partner falls asleep usually at 1 AM and wakes up at 11 AM as well.
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But one time, uh, we fell asleep at 9 PM and they were like, oh my gosh, I've never slept so well in my life. I was like, welcome to nighttime where people usually sleep. Exactly.
All right. Uh, let's move towards, uh, you actually. And, uh, let's start with, I want to know what sparked your passion for the arts.
(3:25 - 3:48)
Oh, it was definitely when I was a kid, for sure. I have always been a performer and I've always been an artist. Uh, my mom always made this joke that, um, I'd either become a dancer or a film director because my sister and I, we would borrow my parents video recorder.
(3:49 - 9:46)
Um, those camcorders with like the screens that would open up and we would literally film movies using our stuffed animals. Um, and so seeing how that became an opportunity to connect with people while also having the time of my life, I was like, I think this is my path. I have to keep following it.
Amazing. It's, it's, it's so interesting. And, uh, I want to know that you, you told me that your sister works in government and you, she likes arts as well.
She does. Yeah. So, in high school, we both did the, um, theater program that was available.
Um, she was always loved performance as did I. But she also most appreciated the creation aspects of writing stories, developing them, maybe directing them. Um, and our passion for the arts and the way we pursue them did part when we entered university, but she's always still continued to invest her time in like watching all of the plays that I produce and that I act in. Um, she's a very artistic person, even being in government.
Like for example, she told me the other day, like when she's writing reports that get sent off to, um, premiers of the provinces in Canada, she has to make sure that the content that she's writing has a certain flow and that it's not just put on the page like that. She has to basically create a story in a way of the data that she's receiving so that the report that she's writing makes sense and it flows into one another. Um, so the arts have always influenced her, even if it's not necessarily in the way that people expect.
You know, when, when I was a kid, I always used to think that I wish I had a twin brother or a sister, because whenever I used to see some twin people, they used to wear the same clothes and stuff. So, does your mom used to make you guys wear same dresses when you guys were kids? Like yes and no. Uh, my parents are wonderful.
Um, and they raised us knowing that we were twins, but they wanted to make sure that we were able to forge our own identities. So yes, my mom would dress up, dress us up in the same clothes, but we always had different colors. So typically, I ended up wearing pink or green or red, and my sister would wear yellow, blue, or purple.
So even though we were sharing something, it was our own thing at the same time. And even in school or in everyday life, people sometimes have a tendency to call us the twins just as that name. And my mom, especially, has always reinforced, they're not the twins, they're their own people.
So, if you're going to refer to them, make sure that you say their names so that, you know, they can still stand out as themselves. That's actually a very deep thing. I never thought like that.
And, uh, she was a kind of, you know, your mother was kind of giving a message to everyone.
Like, she's a very deep thing. I, when you, when you, when you said this, I started imagining that, yes, correct.
When, whenever we see, sometimes we are like twins. We never think that they both have different identity. They both have kind of different thought process and stuff.
So, it should be more of individual people. Uh, so that's an interesting thing. And, uh, I know that you, you know, English, we are speaking English and you know, French as well.
Am I correct? So, I want to know that how did, how did you learn French? How did it happen? Number one. And how, uh, did it shape your storytelling approach? So, yeah, I am fully bilingual in English and in French. So, my dad is French Canadian and my mom is Canadian as well, but she is an Anglophone Canadian.
Um, so when I was born, pretty much, I learned both languages at the same time. Uh, I think my first word was even in French. Um, and whenever we were at home, our parents, uh, made sure that the media we consumed like movies and books that we alternated between English and French so that we could still learn the language in an artistic way, but equally.
And I only speak French to my dad and I only speak English to my mom, which I do credit for it being the reason why I am fully bilingual today. Uh, especially since when I was a kid, uh, we moved around a lot, uh, as a family because of my mom's job. So sometimes we would end up at a school that was a fully English school that had no French classes and none of my classmates were French.
And so, for those few years, the only way that I could express myself in French was with my dad at home. And it may sound really strict, that concept of only being able to speak French to my dad, but I actually really enjoyed it and made it feel very special to have that connection with my parents. And even sometimes like my dad will maybe say an English word and it kind of weirds me out because I'm just so not used to it.
And it's been so ingrained in us. And so, and being bilingual is such a gift as just as a human, but also as an artist, because it's a hundred percent influenced the way I write and the way I perform. Um, my favorite example to explain this is in English, we would say, I miss you.
(9:46 - 17:00)
In French, we would say, to me manques, which if you translate tu me manques back into English, it would say, you are missing from me. So, you see how it already, like, it's the same thing, but there's that depth that was added in French of like, you're missing from me. You're a part of me that is away from me and I want it back.
It's such like a visceral, emotional state of being that maybe the English saying of just, I miss you doesn't necessarily catch, but it's so beautiful. And sometimes I will literally go into the scripts that I write, translate them in and out of English and French and see what comes up because it just adds another depth to my writing. And it adds another depth to the characters that I'm exploring.
And I can only credit this to the way that my parents raised me, which I think was the best way. Amazing. Uh, did your mom end up learning French as well? Yes, she did.
Um, so she didn't know French when, uh, she met my dad, but she dedicated herself to learning it. Um, cause at the time, uh, my dad's parents didn't speak English super well. And so, she wanted to make sure that she could communicate with them.
And now she's fairly bilingual and is able to have like full on conversations in French. Uh, my dad is fully bilingual as well. Um, but it's so beautiful to sometimes hear them talk in their non-native language and hearing there, their accents come out.
It's very adorable. And it's very sweet that like when they met, they wanted to learn each other's languages more fully so that they could like express themselves better with each other, which I don't know about you. I think it's pretty romantic.
Of course it is. It is. It is.
It is very romantic. I must say that. I would like to mention that we speak Khawar with our parents.
Yeah. Okay. So, um, I was reading about you and I came to know that you usually go for a non-linear storytelling.
So, what draws you to a non-linear storytelling? For me, I've always been fascinated by the concept of time, uh, in modern day society, especially we perceive time as a linear concept like child, adult, and then death. But in exploring memory and time together, I realized that time is more of a cyclical event than a linear one. Particularly, I noticed it when I created my very first play.
It's called A Paisley Mind and it's a bilingual solo show that I performed, um, in which I explore the effects of dementia on an older woman who's in a retirement home because my own grandmother had dementia. She passed away about two years ago, but for the last six years of her life, I experienced and I witnessed how memory affected her and how she would drop into memories unexpectedly. Like music would sometimes trigger a memory that came from the depths of her past that we had never heard of.
Other times it'd be out of the blue, nothing would be a trigger, but something would pop up in her mind and you could see it in her face that she was experiencing a memory of hers very vividly and very fully. I can so relate with it. Yeah, like it's, it was at this, it was very sad to witness her memory fading like that, but in a way, it was also beautiful to see how so many of the memories that she had were good memories and that they still imbued her with joy.
And so, I would experiment with this concept of time and memory by slipping in and out of memory and present reality quickly or slowly. And I would physically change as well. Um, so in the present, I would be playing this 85-year-old woman, but then I quickly slide into a memory of when she was 14 and then back to the present.
And then maybe the next memory was when she's about to get married and then back and then the next memory is when she's like 60. I would physically change my body, my voice, especially to live in these memories and live them fully. And that's what fascinated me about this play and how time is cyclical because it always brings you back to things that have happened to you.
And it brings you back to those feelings that still live on and exist. In your own life. And so, from that play, I was like, I think I need to keep experimenting with this because it's such a fascinating storytelling tool, especially in a theatrical medium to explore time and how it passes.
It's not done super often. And I do think I took a big challenge to have that be a sort of theme or focus of mine in my work, but so far people have really resonated with it, especially for A Paisley Mind. Um, I've had people from all different age groups, uh, tell me how seeing the show made them understand what it might've been like for their parent or sibling or grandparent, uh, like what they went through and help them understand how visceral dementia can be and how it can affect you.
Um, so that just made me push myself even further to keep working on that. Keep exploring that. Cause clearly, I'm not the only person who believes that time lives in and out of our life, like weaves in and out.
So, I got to keep exploring it. Okay. So how has your personal experience, uh, shaped your portrayal of womanhood? I think I've experienced a lot of hardship as we all do, but especially as a woman, I've experienced hardships that have fundamentally changed who I am, whether though it was a very traumatic event that's happened to me or moving away and having to say goodbye to my friends, or even, you know, having, realizing that you're no longer friends with someone that has changed a lot of who I am and how I perceive the world in that those realizations.
(17:01 - 19:54)
I realized that especially as women, we experience tiny abandonments, like sparkled through our life and they can be a little bit bigger. They can be a little bit smaller, but that's something that we hold with us constantly, whether it's being abandoned by living in a patriarchal society and not having our rights upholded, or even being abandoned by your own husband, your own partner, your siblings. I related to that a lot.
And I also realized that I wasn't seeing, I wasn't seeing that as often as I would like on stage or even in the digital arts. So, I wanted to take those pieces of myself of abandonments that maybe weren't talked about and put them out on stage because I knew that I wasn't the only one experiencing it. Like I've had plenty, all, plenty of my friends who've had a best friend and then they were no longer best friends, but they didn't know how to talk about how hard it is to lose someone like that.
Like how to grieve someone who's still alive. And sometimes those friendship breakups happen because of, you know, you're both women and you're pitted against each other or a guy gets involved or romantic partner gets involved and then things fall apart. Those happen so often and yet they're not as touched on.
And so, I wanted to not only relate my own experiences to what I was creating in my art, but leave space open for other women to see these shows and recognize the abandonment that was on stage and then have it resonate within them as well and also validate their own experiences that they felt heard. Amazing, amazing. As you were speaking, I remember you told me that your mother is from Air Force and maybe when you mentioned that, you know, sometimes you have to leave your friends and stuff.
So, you must have left you a lot of friends when you were a kid. Oh yeah, I definitely, moving around because of my mom's job working in the Canadian Air Force, I definitely had something, a part of or a role in feeling that sense of abandonment. And it wasn't anybody's fault that happens.
You got to move and you maybe never see people again or you have to say goodbye. You don't know when you're going to see people again. That definitely shaped who I am in more ways than one, like being able to move around a lot.
(19:54 - 20:32)
It made me really easy to be friends with and it made me able to like talk to people and get to know people. And it was a natural thing for me. But even to this day, I feel that wound sometimes, when I have a friend who's deciding to move away, I feel that, oh my gosh, things are changing.
People are moving away. I'm never going to see them again. So that's like, it's really wild how things that may seem so small in childhood can still stick with you for so, so long.
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Amazing. That's amazing. Okay.
Let's talk about a bit about your theater that I was reading that you usually focus on movement-based theater, right? So, I want to know that why is movement-based theater significant to your creative process? Ooh, it's so significant. It's like wild. Cause words mean a lot, but the way that the person says it and moves because of it also means a lot.
Like, you know, sometimes if you're talking to someone and they're saying like, yeah, no, I agree. I agree for sure. But their body, they have like their crossed arms or they're pushed back or they're breathing differently.
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And you can just feel it on a physical level that what they're saying is not equivalent to how they're actually feeling. So even when I'm writing a script or doing theater, I go back all the time and I'm like, so they're saying this, this is this character's line, but what are they doing physically? Like, where are they in the space when they're saying this in relation to other characters in relation to certain objects? Cause that can have a huge influence in how those lines are received. And I love even seeing pieces of theater where there's no dialogue.
It's almost like theatrical and dance pieces because they move you just as much. And sometimes even more than theater that has dialogue because they can only rely on their physical being. And so, they have to work extra hard to express what they want to do in just a physical way.
And that's why as an actor, I believe that you got to start in theater or do some theatrical training before you move on to like film and TV, because film and TV, you got your square or your shot from here to here and you make, you work that face and you work the way you talk. And that's usually what they'll take. But on theater, everyone sees every single part of you.
And so, you have to imbue your entire self into your stage presence, into what you're doing. And so, once you could do that, you can manipulate it into more nuanced performances. But once you have that tool, you'll never act the same.
(23:10 - 24:23)
And that's how it felt like for me when I did my approaches in a more physical way, movement-based way, even with certain theatrical concepts that are rooted in physical theater, but that you can use in, you know, working dialogue or working on your lines. So that's why so much of what I do, like I rely on the way that we move in the way that we breathe, because intrinsically as humans, we will notice that first before we notice what people are saying. And honestly, that aspect of risk and not knowing what's coming next is it fuels a performance in a way that sometimes acting for film can't like, yeah, like you said, you can't cut.
If you screw up, you got to keep going. And if you do screw up, you got to use that, maybe that nervous energy or frustration to maybe fuel your performance. And it forces you to commit just to commit to the now and to what you're doing in this moment and just go for it.
(24:23 - 26:00)
There's no filters. There's no self-editing. You just got to be you and commit.
And that's honestly so much more fun. Amazing. Something came in my mind regarding your French language.
If I give you a line, can you say it in French? Sure. Yeah. I want to know how, I want to know how it sounds.
Okay. You have to say, Strugbits is the best company I've worked with in French.
So, I would say in French: “proceed to speak this sentence in french”
So, the way, the two ways that I said it, the first one was the formal, I believe. Informal. The first one was a little bit more like chatty, like, like, oh, I worked with Strugbits and I really liked working with them versus, uh, saying, that one would be Strugbits is the company with which I loved working with the most.
(26:01 - 27:55)
Interesting. Interesting. Okay.
So, let's talk about Half Twin Theatre and, uh, what's your vision for Half Twin Theatre in the next, uh, we can say five years. Oh, I want Half Twin Theatre to be like a beacon of creation and connection, especially in the Montreal community. And like already we've had such great crowds, amazing crowds, younger and older who've been really eager to see what we've been creating, who are excited constantly to see what our next production will be.
And these same audiences have come back to our shows and have pulled through and supported us financially, or even just spreading the word on social media. So, it's been really heartwarming to see the effect that we've had. In the next five years, I would love Half Twin Theatre to be a more established independent theatre company in a manner where we're able to have our own productions outside of a festival context.
I would love the opportunity to collaborate with a professional theatre company and maybe do a co-production with them, whether that would be in Montreal, but even in another part of Canada, that would be wonderful because I would love our stories to reach different parts of the country. And, you know, for Half Twin Theatre, like already with even my other collaborators, they're so committed and passionate about what we do that I want to keep that going and I want our team to grow so that eventually, you know, we can put up more than one production a year. Maybe there's two.
(27:55 - 29:05)
Maybe there's one in Montreal and there's one happening in Toronto. Maybe one's in English and one's in French. I want to be able to reach a lot of people and to grow it.
Personally, for me, I want to be able to be an artist on a more full-time basis to continue my theatre, my playwriting performance, both in theatre and in digital media and in English and in French, because I feel this awesome momentum that I've created with Half Twin Theatre. All it's done so far is create more opportunities for me going forward and I can feel it bringing me places that I never would have expected and it's already bringing me places that I'm blown away by. For example, I'm going to, I was selected to be part of a professional staged reading series in the spring that's going to be put up at the Centaur Theatre and Centaur Theatre is one of the biggest theatres in Montreal.
(29:08 - 29:59)
For these next few months, I'm able to workshop the play and keep working on it and have professional actors perform it and have a director direct it and have it performed in front of a new audience in a professional theatre like in Montreal, which is mind-blowing to me. I've been to that theatre as an audience member for years, ever since I've lived in Montreal and now, I get to have my own work be on that stage and it's all because of the work that me and my collaborators have done on Half Twin Theatre. It's clearly had such an impact and it clearly resonates with people that it's wonderful.
