CALMBEFORE THESTORM
Onstage, Morro and Jasp are bickering clown sisters with a penchant for messy mischief. They’re regulars on the Fringe Festival circuit; their sellout shows include Morro and Jasp Do Puberty, Morro and Jasp Go Wild and Morro and Jasp: Go Bake Yourself! (They won a Dora Award earlier this week for their March remount of that last one.)
In person, and without their red noses on, Heather Marie Annis (Morro) and Amy Lee (Jasp) are cheerful (and tidy) actors in their late-twenties with a penchant for root beer floats, which they are enjoying at the picturesque Bathurst Street bakery Madeleines, Cherry Pie and Ice Cream on the hottest day of the year so far. Their director, Byron Laviolette (who has directed and cocreated every Morro and Jasp show since the very first appearance of the characters in a student production at York University), is here too, but he claims he isn’t “fun enough” for a root beer float, and opts for an iced Americano instead. (He does, however, prove fun enough to pose with someone else’s root beer float and help himself to a sip.)
Annis and Lee used to meet at Madeleines all the time when they lived in the area. Now, they’re both east-enders, but will soon be spending plenty of time in the Annex again — they’re appearing in two shows in next month’s Toronto Fringe Festival, both at the Tarragon Theatre, which is right around the corner.
The two clowns and their director have been tricky to pin down lately — Lee, just a couple hours before, flew home from the U.K. and Annis has just returned from a visit to the Ottawa Fringe Festival. “This is the first time we’ve been in the same city in over two weeks,” Lee says.
It’s an unusual delay for them, especially since they’re working on not one, but two shows in the Toronto Fringe this summer. But they’re about to make up for lost time — at five the following morning, Annis, Lee and Laviolette are driving up to a “clown farm” on Manitoulin Island for five days to finish work on their next show, Of Mice and Morro and Jasp, their own clownish take on John Steinbeck’s classic Depression-era novel.
It’s a new experiment for them, since they’ve never based a Morro and Jasp show on an outside source before. “It’s added a whole new layer of exploration,” Annis explains. They studied the book closely to figure out how to bring the story into Morro and Jasp’s world. “Once we looked at it, the relationships [between Steinbeck’s George and Lennie, and Morro and Jasp] seemed quite similar,” Lee says. And unfortunately, Steinbeck’s story about the challenges of making a living are especially relevant these days.
Annis and Lee are also appearing — not as Morro and Jasp — in PornStar by Edmonton playwright Chris Craddock, which is also directed by Laviolette. The play also happens to be about sisters, but the similarities end there. “For me, it’s very refreshing to work on that show because it’s so traditional, vs. Morro and Jasp,” Laviolette says. “It’s about sex and society and the pressures that happen.”
As final sips of floats and Americanos are taken, the sky turns ominous, and the imminent storm reminds the three Fringe artists that they still have a ton of work to do — and a very early morning. Conversation turns to packing details and the clowns slip out into the rain.