Canadian playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Jordan Tannahill stay true to their roots despite U.S. success

Globe and Mail

3 days ago

Want to get a coffee with Canadian playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Jordan Tannahill? Good luck. Both writers are, to say the least, a little busy.
Moscovitch's play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes runs until June 18 on Broadway – starring Hugh Jackman, no less. She's also a writer and executive producer on AMC's Interview with the Vampire. Her play Red Like Fruit is playing in Toronto now as part of Luminato Festival, and travels to the Edinburgh Fringe later this summer. And Sophia's Forest, the opera for which Moscovitch, 46, wrote the libretto, is in the midst of a four-day run with City Opera Vancouver. She also has a film in the works, a psychological thriller called Child's Play set to star Sandra Oh.
Tannahill, 37, has a ton on the go, too: His play Prince Faggot is now in previews and will run until July 6 off-Broadway. (His friend and mentor, fellow audacious playwright Jeremy O. Harris, is a producer on the show.) He has a film in the pipeline, as well – a medieval horror flick called Rapture, set to star Will Poulter, Kit Connor and Manu Ríos.
In addition to stacked Google calendars, the pair have other things in common, too: Both had childhoods in suburban Ottawa, and both found early success as playwrights in Toronto.
The Globe and Mail facilitated a Zoom chat between the writers on a rare day off from rehearsals and writing.
Hannah Moscovitch (HM): Jordan, why did you want to expand your artistic practice beyond playwriting? I feel like you've always been curious about other mediums.
Jordan Tannahill (JT): That was one of the great gifts of growing up in a city like Toronto, which is perhaps less driven by capitalism than London or New York. There was room to follow my curiosity – I felt really flexible in that way.
But, Hannah, the craft and intelligence of your stage work – I'm excited to see you bring that into the TV and film space. Has that been satisfying?
HM: Working in U.S. television is so satisfying. The people I work with are astonishingly good. Once you can pull internationally because you have those American dollars, what you can make is just so extraordinary. I came up through Canada, where you hone your abilities and then by the time the Americans or Brits notice you, you've already got everything figured out – when I ended up on Interview with the Vampire, they were like, 'Oh, we got a really good deal.'
And I've learned so much from working with [Interview with the Vampire showrunner] Rolin Jones. He holds himself to such high standards. In the writers' room, he's told us to go away and write a scene that's better than Breaking Bad.
JT: Wow.
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Jordan, do you remember when you and Hannah met?
JT: I remember I was a fan before I met you, Hannah. I was aware of your work and had seen it – but I got to work with [Christian Barry, husband to Moscovitch and co-founder of 2b Theatre] on my very first play.
HM: Which was gorgeous, by the way. You were so obviously so good in that, Jordan. I came up quite quickly – everyone got to watch my failures.
JT: [Laughing] I don't remember you having failures, Hannah.
HM: But you were so fully formed so quickly. You were so good, and such a peer, immediately.
JT: I don't feel that way at all, but that's very generous. I sort of feel the inverse way to you, actually – I got to teach myself publicly how to make theatre. There were so many opportunities for young creators, development programs and festivals. I owe such a debt to those initiatives, those artists who mentored me.
I saw Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes last week, by the way, and I loved it. It was one of the strongest things I've seen so far in the spring, and I think it's so exciting to see a Canadian work take its place amongst a very strong season of Tony Award contenders.
HM: Thank you. I made changes for this production from the version that premiered at Tarragon in 2020, but they were minimal. I had never workshopped it before. So we spent a lot of time trying to make sure it would work in an American context – I feel like I'm saying terrible things. I'm admitting that American contexts are different from Canadian ones.
And are they? Do you feel like you've changed how you think about your work since leaving Canada?
HM: Yeah. I wonder often, now, how honest I want to be. I'm constantly being told by my American colleagues, 'I don't know what the hell you're trying to say, but just say it.' They're always mad that I'm trying to do things carefully.
JT: I'd argue, too, that neither of us have really left Canada – Hannah, in your case, you're very much still a Halifax-based artist. I think we've always had artists whose trajectories will be international. That's a healthy thing to happen within a national arts ecosystem – I know that I still consider myself a Canadian artist, developing work in Canada.
HM: Me too.
JT: Sometimes you're fortunate enough to begin working internationally, and hopefully, your work will take you out of the country at different times. But it's a dialogue – and I feel very much still part of the conversation in Canada.
HM: Agreed. It was never my desire to leave – I was living in Nova Scotia and then started to work in American television, mostly because people there had found my plays and then started to ask me to join them.
But there's been some revelation for me in leaving, which I wasn't necessarily expecting. Both Canada as a country and theatre as a medium are marginal – to be outside of that for a little while, to be part of a larger conversation that is more central, has its appeal.
I have things I want to say that are important to me, and I want to be able to say them in a broad context. That doesn't mean I don't love theatre or appreciate its liveness. I do. But I don't see any reason why I can't do both.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.