![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.exclaim.ca\/images\/ms_bob_wiseman.jpg\" "\\"Bob")
<\/p>\nBy Kevan Hannah<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Musician, songwriter, director, actor, playwright\u2014Toronto\u2019s Bob Wiseman has built a 25 year career upon finding new roles to play, crashing and bleeding into each other to create an art that is uniquely his own. It\u2019s transformed Wiseman\u2019s live performances into an audio-visual spectacle, backing his music with evocative, original films written and directed by the man himself. He was kind enough to spend some time talking to Stylus<\/em> about his performances, which Winnipeg audiences can experience for themselves at the Ragpickers Theatre this Saturday, May 1.<\/p>\n Stylus: You seem to be constantly spinning as many creative plates as you can. How are things going for you these days?<\/strong> Stylus: How did you branch out into writing for theatre?<\/strong> Stylus: Where did the inspiration for the play come from?<\/strong> Stylus: Your catalog of work is incredibly thick and diverse, and seems to be constantly changing and evolving across so many mediums. Outside of your play, what are you doing these days, creatively?<\/strong> Stylus: How do you keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed with so many projects always going on?<\/strong> Stylus: The live show is deeply rooted in performance artistry, and seems to lean on the visual element even more than the musical one. How did your act evolve from just your run-of-the-mill concert?<\/strong> Stylus: And the audience has reacted pretty positively to what you\u2019ve been doing?<\/strong> Stylus: You\u2019re still a relatively national talent. How did you end up in Europe?<\/strong> Stylus: You\u2019ve been living as an artist for well over 25 years, but you haven\u2019t taken any significant breaks or hiatuses. Do you find it difficult, after that length of time, to keep yourself invested in the work you do?<\/strong> Stylus: How do you stay motivated after all this time?<\/strong> By Kevan Hannah Musician, songwriter, director, actor, playwright\u2014Toronto\u2019s Bob Wiseman has built a 25 year career upon finding new roles to play, crashing and bleeding into each other to create an art that is uniquely his own. It\u2019s transformed Wiseman\u2019s live performances into an audio-visual spectacle, backing his music with evocative, original films written and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBob Wiseman<\/strong>: Pretty good. I wrote a play about my experiences with lawyers and the music business. A lot of that is funny, and I\u2019m mounting that at the Uno Festival in Victoria later in May, and then at several Fringe festivals over the summer, including Winnipeg. And I just was in Europe, over the last six weeks.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: I\u2019m not sure, there\u2019s a few stories I could tell. But I guess foremost, being from Winnipeg, originally, you move to a bigger place like Toronto and it\u2019s thrilling that there are so many arts, there\u2019s a critical mass of people to make a lot of independent art viable and I like attending a lot of things. So I\u2019ve always been interested in theatre. Specifically, I wrote this play because this theatre festival in Toronto called SummerWorks, and they have a music component. They asked me if I would play a party several months before the festival was going to begin, because they thought I would be one of the music people. But they were kind of charmed with the films that I have that three of them by the end of the night were like, \u201cYou know, you should just do this as a play.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: There\u2019s a few different things in my past that I thought about and the one that stuck with me as the most amusing was maybe having it to do with lawsuits and lawyers, because I\u2019ve been in the music business a while and because I\u2019ve seen a lot of that stuff up close. Some of it\u2019s serious, like my first record, which was destroyed by Warner Bros. because I used the word \u201cPepsi\u201d in a song that went on about how Salvador Allende was murdered in Chile in the \u201970s. From that to in the \u201990s, when Prince decided to become a symbol, I put out a press release that I would become Prince. I was on CNN, it went all around. I thought it would just be a joke in Toronto, but it went all around the world, and then Prince\u2019s lawyers wrote me a letter threatening me. So all those kinds of stories I dramatized in my play. The play is called Actionable<\/em>, partly because that the language that Prince\u2019s lawyers used. \u201cAny attempt by Mr. Wiseman to utilize our client\u2019s valuable trademark will be actionable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: There\u2019s always a few things going on. The main thing I\u2019m doing is preparing for this tour. That will bring me to the theatre above Ragpickers on May 1. And I\u2019m working with this new sound and lighting woman named Christina and it\u2019s nice to have someone with me to help plan the presentation of the work. I\u2019m working on some new films for the live show, and probably in the midst of that, when I get to that in May, I\u2019ll start to refocus on Actionable<\/em>. I have, in the past, taken on too many things and I\u2019ve disappointed people sometimes for doing that and I think I\u2019ve learned lessons from that. As much as my bio may look thick, I try to be careful to actually be able to finish the things I say I can do. Right now, that would be to do these concerts well and to try to advance the films I\u2019m in the midst of.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: It would be great to have staff. The thing always in the back of my head is that, if I had a real big leg-up, if I had a real shot, if I came into a windfall, I wouldn\u2019t go to Hawaii, I wouldn\u2019t take a vacation. I would hire one or two people to help me with however many activities I\u2019m trying to do. I would get more things done and done better if I could employ people. So I just try to take on everything I can possibly do. It\u2019s the nature of being an artist, and trying to survive. You get involved in so many things. I think the more complex a structure is, the more likely it is to remain. I guess you could call it an observation of architecture. So, to be an independent, self-employed artist, it\u2019s not only that it turns me on to do lots of things, but it also helps ensure my survival.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: I think it morphed into what it is during the last ten years because I became friends with a lot of film people and a lot of comedians, and a lot of the comedians were using video in their performances. The film people were kind of far-out and charming, they would work with things like Super-8 film. It\u2019s all just part of the fun of living in Toronto. It just got under my skin. I mean, I\u2019m in my forties, and I looked at what I was doing on stage, just like the other ten million singer-songwriters. If you\u2019re not established in a big way, where you\u2019re playing theatres, then the people who come to the places you play tend to be in their twenties and tend to be interested in other artists who are also in their twenties. I found myself just trying to make sense of what I\u2019m doing, and what I wanted to continue with.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: Except for one night in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Generally I\u2019d say that the audiences really love what I\u2019m doing. And even in Klaipedia, Lighuania, they really loved it, there was just this one drunk guy. As soon as you put a film on, everyone\u2019s like \u201cShh! Shut up, shut up, it\u2019s a movie!\u201d I subtitle the films, and I think people really enjoy that when I\u2019m in foreign countries. It helps them understand the humour of what I\u2019m doing, or the seriousness of what I\u2019m doing. And I think they respect me trying to say these things in their language. A lot of people just go to other countries and continue to sing in English and that\u2019s a strange thing. People encourage you to just feel comfortable about that.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: At the end of the last tour, I returned, to my surprise, to see that David Byrne had added four of my songs to his March playlist. That was part of what helped secure me getting a new agent for Europe. I was trying to get a more substantial agent, as a lot of those people just have blinders on for artists who are associated with a lot of money or with a new record deal. A lot of them would tell me to just go away because they were too busy. <\/strong>So there were four new agents that I was encouraged to approach and three of them wrote me back and were like \u201cYeah, sure, we would like to book you next time.\u201d I got all my films subtitled so that everybody understands what I\u2019m saying and gets my jokes.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: Making it original and exciting for me isn\u2019t something that I have to work at. That\u2019s a given. I\u2019ve always had a relationship with creating work that\u2019s stimulating, that turns me on, and I don\u2019t imagine it ever would stop. The great thing in being an artist and creating work is that it allows you to address things that are upsetting emotionally. The thing that artists do, whether they\u2019re filmmakers or dancers or musicians is that whatever they get upset about\u2014a break-up, relationship, Stephen Harper not allowing reporters to the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan\u2014they create work about it. It makes them feel less impotent in a world that is often broken. For me, that\u2019s never been something I\u2019m concerned about losing.<\/p>\n
\nBW<\/strong>: I have to be motivated. I\u2019m not some multimillionaire and I need to get by. But I love my work. I think that when people tell me that I look younger than I am or when they comment that I don\u2019t get sick very much, I like to think that\u2019s because I\u2019m doing what I like to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"