Stephen Jackman-Torkoff Interview | Koko Summer Rainbow Kester
March 26, 2024
Lilly Lam, Richard II Graphic Notes, 2024
This conversation follows in the lush wake of Stephen Jackman-Torkoff’s radical queer performance as Richard II in William Shakespeare’s Richard II at the Stratford Festival, Canada (June–September 2023). The play was directed by Jillian Keiley, adapted by Brad Fraser, and set during a combined reign of Richard and disco in late 1970s to early ’80s New York.
Actress and playwright Koko Summer Rainbow Kester, a first-year student at the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS), spoke with Jackman-Torkoff, an NTS alum, on the eve of the actor’s move to Toronto, at a time of new beginnings. Their exchange is an ode and coda to a performance that changed Canadian theatre – now redefined by Jackman Torkoff’s “unlimited feeling of what being queer is.”
Rainbow Kester
When you do a run like the one you just finished, are you yearning for new creative outlets or rest?
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff
When it ended, so many things compounded, this and that – it was so much physically! I almost hurt myself.
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (centre) as King Richard II with members of the company in Richard II, Stratford Festival, 2023 | photo: David Hou
RK
In the dance numbers?
SJT
On the day of the filming, it was the hardest day of the season. Filming, I was very in my head. It was new, there were cameras, then we did pickups in the evening, and I had to be Richard again and drop into one scene and another and another. That night, I smoked a joint and was in my bed, and I thought I heard something in the other room, so I got up in the dark and it was nothing, but when I went back to lay in my bed I missed. I fell on the floor. It wasn’t directly from the show. It was from the exhaustion.
At first I felt really happy to let the show go. I cut off my hair, I cut off my mustache the day after. I had put so much work into it, and around the show, getting people there. I really wanted to give people tickets, make it an event. Friends came. It was so amazing but it was also six months of social in the socialite way, not the deep, intimate friendship way. Do you know? I’m coming back to that. I realize I’m a private person. Or my identity – I was talking about being nonbinary the other day, and how it’s really, for me, not another label. It’s no binaries, no walls. I feel like that with my career, too. People are like, “What’s your next show?” and I say, “I’m a painter now!” (laughs) I have some jobs coming up but a huge transition and ownership of what I want. I want to be a wandering poet. I want to travel the world and connect with people, and be a Shakespearean fool. It’s not a career or job that would come up in your civics class, but I can still make it, I can still imagine it. Whenever I feel like I can’t do anything, or I’m tired, I think “Surely if I can do that show, I can do this.”
RK
You performed how often?
SJT
I was in two shows. For Richard II, it was two or three times a week, sometimes four. Then I did the other one [Grand Magic] two or three times. But it was a lot. If it was an 8-show-a-week deal, I would have to take different care of myself, because I would lose my voice.
RK
If it were me, performing that often as Richard II, I would have to be silent offstage. I keep wondering about the conversations around making Richard II openly queer and how challenging it was for the general Stratford audience?
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (left) and Emilio Vieira with members of the company in Richard II, Stratford Festival, 2023 | photo: David Hou
SJT
Our director Jillian Keiley had recently read Brad Fraser’s memoir, and Fraser is the one who adapted our play. Jillian started to conceive the world and thought Brad was the right person to collaborate with, so when I came to the audition, I knew what to expect. I didn’t help create that concept, but I can fulfill the concept and expand on the concept because I am my queer self. And I brought all of myself to it, and my unlimited feeling of what being queer is.
As far as audiences go, it was difficult at first. The hot tub scene was throwing them off. People didn’t really know what they were getting into, at first. They have their own experience of Stratford, they have their history plays. They were like, “What the fuck is going on!” There were some complaints, but it settled. The Stratford audience is not one block of people, and some can be on board for what’s going on and some are having a conniption. That scene was beautifully directed. For me, as a performer and as a person, my philosophy of sex is that it’s not only physical, it’s spiritual, it’s a way to connect to someone and entwine. It’s not just, “Look at us doing queer sex.” It’s the divinity, too.
Someone recently said, “Maybe that part was why they were turned off.” Some people. I’m sure some were turned on. Someone mentioned it was gratuitous but I think it showed the relationship and the expansiveness of Richard’s self, kingdom, and that you can sit inside places of pleasure for longer than just one narrative point. It’s a savouring of pleasure.
RK
The point was not to be comfortable. It didn’t feel accommodating. It showed Richard and what he wants. He does want pleasure.
SJT
To see someone in their private moment, you can do that through art and theatre. I’m not Richard, so we get to create a fictional world and see a character in a private world, where it’s like, “Should we be here?” But we are here. The audience is a part of it. The director and I spoke about the audience as god, with god as a many-headed beast judging you but also loving you. Also, pleasure can be connected to love. In that scene, we repeat “Thou mine, I thine” to each other. They gave over to each other, they were melting into each other, and that was always one of the most beautiful things about that character. It was his capacity to love someone and let himself be loved and connect. That’s something I strive for in life, whether it’s with lovers, friends, family, I want to get to the core of it. The Richard I envision was able to do that and go to very deep places, and sometimes it was very scary, but there was enlightenment. Then he got murdered.
RK
When I saw you perform, I felt tethered to Richard and what he wanted. There was always a fourth wall. You were never talking to me, but it felt like you were. How do you keep that connection with the audience?
SJT
I had periods of shyness with the crowd early on. But to make the character work, I had to believe in myself and have courage, which means to let myself be seen, and let the audience in, regardless of what they’re going through. I didn’t break the wall, in that the audience knew they were my audience, but I did look at people and connect. They were god whenever I referred to god in the play. There was a period when I would look for the lovers, for the people who were vibing, and that would give me power. Even in the opening dance, if people started screaming, I’d connect to them. They’d yell “I love you!” and I’d yell “I love you” to encourage that, to let people be a part of it. Then you feel, as a performer, that you’re in another dimension, and you stay open and more vulnerable to the moment.
The capacity to be a full human is the capacity to hold shame and guilt and sadness and embarrassment and happiness and pleasure – to hold it all, which is what I think that character is able to do. We see him at absolute heights and in absolute shit. As a performer, the energy of the people who are upset with what you are doing, it can be more overpowering than the people who love it, and I have to embrace that and be in that. I have to stand behind what we’re doing and what I believe in. Though, by the end, it was mostly love.
RK
When you came on stage, you did your dance number. Could you immediately tell the energy coming at you?
SJT
A little bit, because we’re looking out. You’d be shocked. You don’t perceive a world where a whole disco is happening. People look like they want to go to sleep. I would think, What’s happening out there?
RK
I cried when you were dancing! I was in the second row on the side stage and I started crying. I could cry now.
SJT
I loved it when I could feel that energy. Sometimes I would finish that dance, or in the middle, I would think I have to stop. I would be so tired and think, “It’s not over yet!” (laughs) 2pm in Stratford, Ontario.
RK
When did you graduate NTS [National Theatre School of Canada]?
SJT
2013.
RK
I just started my first year. I just finished Neutral Mask. We did our hero’s journey and I realized that I am always trying to get stuff from the world I’m in. I’m reliant on inspiration to hit me. I learned that I have to create my own inspiration, that it’s a relationship to myself. I wonder, when you’re on stage in rehearsals or performances, how do you stay open to new impulses and follow them when they arrive?
SJT
It depends on the project. This year I was very open in rehearsal, and me and the director tried to find Richard’s freedom as he embodies it. He is completely free, or sometimes is. But it’s hard as an actor to constantly keep that. I try to stay as open as possible. There’s a scene when I’m handing off the crown and this fluff just kept popping by, and I kept grabbing it – that’s a physical thing. It just happened.
It’s like weaving, so you can have openness in the moment and follow an impulse, but I do a lot of reflection, too. I smoke a joint, sit on my laptop, and go through the show in my head. I think, “That was weird, that was good, or that makes me think of this.” The scene where I’m kissing the earth, I thought it would be interesting if I pretend to snatch souls from the crowd. I’d do this movement of pulling them in – and putting it all in me – but that came from sitting and thinking. And I believe in failure. I think the reason I have the career I do is because I’ve let myself go there, and I follow the impulse, and sometimes it’s cringe but sometimes magic.
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (right) and Jordin Hall in Richard II, Stratford Festival, 2023 | photo: David Hou
You’re in school, right? You can follow it or not. I miss my early NTS self. I was naïve. (laughs) Not as many things that affected me emotionally had happened yet. I had such energy. I was 18. My roommate just turned 18, too. You know the bar the Brass behind the school? We would dance so hard and do contact improv at the bar, swirling around each other. This kind of philosophy of following impulses takes practice, and for me I’m at a point I understand it, especially when I do my own work, my own poetry, my Poetic Dreamscape Odysseys I call them. Then I’m director-writer-performer, so the limits, there are none.
RK
At school they’ll give us a topic: you’re a seed being watered, that turns into a fire, that turns into a wildfire that spreads, that turns to ash.
SJT
I think about those exercises because I would do them 150 percent. I feel like I’m more skilled and talented, but I don’t have the same kind of buy-in I did when I was younger, and I want to have that. I actually gave over. I was a seed that became a fire. What’s happening to my body? I was in a trance. Some of that stuff I learned then, I’m challenging myself to bring back. Not being self-aware, I was able to give myself over more. How do you raise awareness while raising abandon at the same time? How did I become a color for an hour?
RK
My hero’s journey was half an hour. I was soloing and completely involved. We are taught, you know, to perform self-surveillance. The number of times a day that I see myself from a camera’s point of view is crazy.
SJT
I don’t know what’s impossible, but I feel like I might never be able to get past that. We had a class at NTS called Mind and Body and it was about going off track and how to bring yourself back. We did exercises about staying in it. There’s a certain grace: I come back to myself and forgive myself.
RK
That comes back to having shame if I come out of my character. I have to have love for myself and not think of embarrassment as bad.
SJT
“Oh no, I felt like myself!” you think. You feel shame for being yourself! (laughs) We aren’t our character at the end of the day. We weave a little bit of ourselves, a little bit of the character, ideas, and I don’t have one process. I don’t always have objectives or the same objectives.
RK
I love hearing silence but seeing what an actor’s thinking. I love the inner monologue. Richard is such a highly and openly emotional character, and so vulnerable, which is why I respect him so much.
SJT
He shows a wide array of what being human is. He’s obviously very privileged because he has the power to create that world. He’s also uniquely in a position that when he fails it’s worse. I’d like to be someone who can hold the capacity of what being human is. He continues despite incredible shame, pain, and guilt. Still he has joy. Being uncontainable – that’s what I wanted to explore, what I find in myself.
I seek roles that connect with me, and that I think are a good friend on my hero’s journey, my personal adventure, as something I can live up to, someone who can show me – Richard can show me confidence. I’m highly creative but I don’t always have confidence or I feel very lonely in it. In his strength and his freedom, I saw a lot of myself, but I saw someone who could put the crown on that.
RK
Like when you were dancing –
SJT
In the moments of life force, dancing and good energy, Richard was a vessel for the divine. That disco ball! I would pretend to lick it. I just wanted to hold it, that power. Often, in the more emotional moments, that’s when I as an actor would become a little more self-aware. It was immediate, like something ripped out from you, the loss of friendship or something. Those parts were when I’d pull from my own life.
I remember, I lost one of my brothers a few years ago. We didn’t grow up together in foster care, but he was my buddy. I remember crying heavy, rolling on the ground. The crying was so enormous, and the shock – I really thought I was going to die. My other brother called me, I was in Berlin, and I couldn’t breathe. So I knew what that was, and I wove in the personal. Not necessarily thinking of my brother every time, but knowing that bodily reaction to loss.
Sometimes it would be the audience as audience, and I almost felt shame for being this human going to all these different places, and maybe I didn’t do good enough for you, but I would use that in those moments of devastation. There were these people in front of me: “Are you able to take me in?” Everything I conveyed in Richard are things I’ve experienced: grief, pleasure, guilt, shame. So it is kind of personal when people turn away from it, and I could use that, and it would help me go on. At the beginning of Act II, if you remember that dance?
RK
Yes.
SJT
The angels had dropped to the ground, and that whole thing was about him regaining his power. How do you drop to the depths and still pull up? I saw someone in the street, and it was an older woman, she said, “Honestly, it was inspiring what you were doing.” That’s what I want you to feel. I’m trying to go somewhere else. I don’t know where it is, but I feel like there’s a way of living and relating to each other that’s very deep and connected, compassionate and free, that I want to make more of in the world. Culture, to me, is how people relate to each other. If I can be an example of someone going that far, then maybe it can inspire others. For some, maybe it’s just a show. Or maybe something happened.
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff as King Richard II with members of the company in Richard II, Stratford Festival, 2023 | photo by David Hou
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff as King Richard II in Richard II, Stratford Festival, 2023 | photo: David Hou
RK
Maybe a big reason why you’ve inspired so many people is that you’re trying to get somewhere but you don’t know where you’re going, and this is one of the most relatable things to feel.
SJT
An amazing thing with the job is how many people talk to me, and are moved. It’s cool, and tiring.
RK
What’s something you look for when you go to see performances?
SJT
A commitment and an openness. I want to feel that magic when I’m at something. I want to be surprised and moved, but everyone is gonna get moved by different things. Watching people care for each other is very moving to me. The scene in the movie, where the friend says I’m still your friend after a hard time, I love that. Expressions of love, and different ways love can manifest is what I like to see. I went to a dance show the other day, and it was so embodied. Anything that goes into my body like that, music that hits you, people who stretch into the wilds, or interdimensional work. I want to ask, “What is going on and where are we?” In a good way. I want to make a tear in the fabric of the universe and take everyone in, the way love will or a deep conversation.
RK
You are going to become a wandering poet, a traveling painter?
SJT
And show love to the world.
Koko Summer Rainbow Kester with Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, Zoom, 2023
RK
Thank you for welcoming me as an equal person.
SJT
I was happy to meet you this summer.
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff is a wandering poet who has wandered into many theatres. They have performed in Richard II, Grand Magic, Every Little Nookie, and Little Women (Stratford Festival), Fifteen Dogs (Crows Theatre), Trout Stanley (Factory Theatre), The Glass Menagerie (Grand Theatre), Angels in America (Arts Club), You Never Can Tell (Shaw Festival), Botticelli in the Fire/Sunday in Sodom (Canadian Stage), and are currently performing in The Inheritance, written by Matthew López and directed by Brendan Healy, at Canadian Stage from March 22–April 13, 2024. Stephen is writer-director-performer of Poetic-Dreamscape-Odysseys and performs them at the Fantasy Theatre (their apartment). Their current Odysseys in production include Die Phantasie and Nucleus.
Koko Summer Rainbow Kester is a actor and playwright, currently in her first year of the acting program at the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS). Before NTS, Rainbow received her undergraduate degree from the University of Guelph in Theatre, where in her final year she wrote and performed in her own production Sun-dried Tomatoes and Radio Shows. Rainbow has acted in 2023’s Toronto Fringe in Corporate Finch by Taylor Marie Graham, which toured to Stratford and Salt Saint-Marie. Rainbow calls Lake Temagami her home where her Anishinabe ancestors, the “Deep Water People,” paddled their canoes.
Lilly Lam is a Taiwanese and Chinese American illustrator born and raised in New York City. She often looks for opportunities to use visuals to explore layers of her identity. She currently works for the City of New York, where she helps New Yorkers rethink their relationship to waste, and lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
