{"id":25878,"date":"2025-02-03T11:11:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/?p=25878"},"modified":"2025-11-05T10:34:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T15:34:48","slug":"point-of-view-is-everything-in-conversation-with-2024-2025-munro-beattie-lecturer-ann-marie-macdonald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/2025\/point-of-view-is-everything-in-conversation-with-2024-2025-munro-beattie-lecturer-ann-marie-macdonald\/","title":{"rendered":"In Conversation with 2024-2025 Munro Beattie Lecturer Ann-Marie MacDonald"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n In Conversation with 2024-2025 Munro Beattie Lecturer Ann-Marie MacDonald\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

By Maya Chorney<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Portrait by Travis Silverman; Front Cover of Ann-Marie MacDonald\u2019s 2022 Novel Fayne<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In advance of the annual Munro Beattie Lecture on February 4<\/a>, acclaimed author, actor, and playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald sat down with English student Maya Chorney<\/a> to discuss her multidisciplinary career, the power of storytelling, and the political dimensions of her work. This conversation offers a glimpse into the themes she will explore in her upcoming lecture, Imps and Imposters: Where Do Stories Come From?, at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maya Chorney, (M.A. Candidate, Department of English)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> Your career started out in theatre. You trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, you\u2019ve performed for the stage and the screen, and you have also authored and co-authored several plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How has your theatre background influenced the trajectory of your writing career? And how did those early experiences in writing for the stage inform how you would later approach novel writing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> My theatre background gave rise to my fiction writing, quite literally, because I set out to write a play which then became Fall on Your Knees<\/em>. I was simply acknowledging that the story wanted to be born into a different kind of body. It didn\u2019t want to arrive in the world as a play, it wanted to arrive as a novel, and I followed that. Then it became a play again in a wonderful kind of evolution where it returned to its genesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acting also informed my writing for theatre because I always write from the point of view of performance: How is this going to be experienced on stage by the actors, the director, the designers, and the audience? Always writing with those many dimensions in mind. When I wrote Goodnight Desdemona<\/em>, it was the first play I wrote that I knew I was not going to be in. That freed me up to really pay attention to the parental metaphor \u201call my children.\u201d I realized, oh, I\u2019m going to take equal responsibility for every single character arc as well as for how they all come together in the overarching plot. And that was a hugely important step. All my writing is informed by my experience of embodying story as an actor. And in turn, my writing for theatre has informed my fiction writing because I\u2019m always trying to create a three-dimensional, immersive experience for the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> On the topic of being a multidisciplinary artist, I\u2019ve always been interested in having what we might call a \u201cslash career,\u201d and learning about how other people make this kind of career work for them. You know, not limiting yourself to being just one thing for your whole life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you tell me more about that willingness to remain fluid and follow your curiosity? What advice would you give to young writers who want to maintain their craft alongside other pursuits?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> That adaptability is more important than ever now. And I certainly grew up with that. I grew up with a mother who really believed that you have to use all of your talents, pursue all of your gifts. My father, too, was a great proponent of changing careers. It was a different time and place, because you could do that more safely in the mid to late twentieth century. Things are more precarious now than they were then, which of course means that, in turn, you need to be ready to be adaptable more than ever. That readiness is more important than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve never heard anyone use the term \u201cslash career,\u201d but it really resonates. I\u2019ve been an actor for stage, television, and film, a playwright, a screenwriter, a broadcast host, a novel writer\u2026I\u2019ve never seen them as being essentially different. They\u2019ve always been different ways of doing one thing, which is telling stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my perspective now, I have a lot of compassion for people who are in your cohort, your generation. You are highly educated, extremely aware, and living in a more precarious world than the one in which I came of age. There\u2019s always precarity, there\u2019s always some kind of threat, there\u2019s always challenge. The world is never a Garden of Eden. But there is an intensification. There\u2019s a gigification of work. And I think, \u201cwow, that\u2019s really hard.\u201d I like to honour the younger generation by saying I respect your challenges\u2014they\u2019re serious. And I don\u2019t think anyone does much without the help of the older generation. We\u2019re all in this together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> I\u2019d like to dwell in the realm of the political a bit longer. In an interview with McGill<\/a>, you described how binaries have been a dominant concern for your entire career. You went on to say that your most recent novel, Fayne<\/em>, \u201cis the ultimate challenge to any binary notion, whether it is of our body, our sexuality, our gender, or the nature of reality and our world itself, and the discovery of what is truly valuable.\u201d As a queer feminist storyteller and scholar, what really stands out to me in your work is how you write marginalized narratives back into the literary record. Fayne<\/em> is a clear recent example of this, but it\u2019s also prevalent in earlier work like Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)<\/em>, which doesn\u2019t so much queer Shakespeare as it plays with the gender fluidity already inherent in the Bard\u2019s productions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you share a bit more about your thoughts on literature as a platform for writing about those historically marginalized narratives, or of the relationship between art and politics more broadly? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie: I love to play with established and traditional forms. With Fayne<\/em>, I use the gothic novel, the Victorian novel, full of tropes and devices and conventions and conceits which are completely delightful and familiar. They\u2019re deeply familiar. Even anyone who\u2019s never read a Victorian novel has watched a Netflix series set in the late nineteenth century, on a moor or in a mansion, set somewhere in the United Kingdom. We are familiar with these conventions. I feel like I\u2019ve done that with most of my work, where I\u2019m going to play with a familiar form, I\u2019m going to enjoy that form, I\u2019m going to offer the delights of that form to the reader or the audience member. And it\u2019s going to allow me to take the audience or a reader on a journey they might not otherwise take and engage with and identify with people they might normally think of as being very other or repellent or frightening or just wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, hopefully I\u2019ve made the invitation welcoming and gracious enough that people go \u201csure, I\u2019m coming with you.\u201d And then by the time they\u2019re surrounded by people they would never ordinarily even say \u201chello\u201d to, it\u2019s too late. They\u2019re having a cup of tea with them, or they\u2019re going on a mortal quest with them. They\u2019re aligned, they\u2019re identified, they\u2019re seeing through somebody else\u2019s lens, somebody else\u2019s point of view. Point of view is everything. That\u2019s it really. I\u2019ve never been the kind of artist who needs to assault the reader or the audience, to prove how important it is that you listen to me and how wrong you are. I\u2019d rather invite you. I think the kind of change that is possible when you actually invite people is much more radical and profound and long lasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> So, a gentle invitation to be more open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> Yes, and I think that is radical and profound and has longevity. I think it makes lasting, deep change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> Now, of course, you\u2019ve written plenty of historical fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you write as you research? How do you know when to stop thinking and researching, and when to start writing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie: I think the process is not just in tandem\u2014back and forth\u2014but one process bleeds into the other. So, the edges of research becoming writing are blurred, as with everything. And that\u2019s where the richness lies, in that uncertainty, that blurriness, in that \u201cactually, I\u2019ve absorbed enough of that to go off into that new blank page.\u201d So, there\u2019s a lot of overlap. It\u2019s almost as if you\u2019re on a rowboat and you\u2019re crossing a body of water. And then you feel that you\u2019re contacting the seabed, there\u2019s sand on the keel. And then you say to yourself, \u201cokay, I\u2019ve run aground, I need to deepen things again. I need to learn something again.\u201d So I go back to the research, and then my boat is freed up again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> Where do you get your inspiration from, these days? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> I never know until it\u2019s already happened. Kind of like \u201coh, well that\u2019s where that came from!\u201d Right now, I\u2019m working on a one-woman show. I\u2019m drawing inspiration from my own life experience in a very open, direct way. But because it\u2019s going to be embodied in movement and sound and performance, there\u2019s a funny kind of thing. Because I\u2019m working on a one-person show for myself to perform, I\u2019m willing to be very personal in the material that I use, directly autobiographical in a way that I never am when I\u2019m writing fiction or theatre. And I think the reason I\u2019m doing that is that I know I\u2019m going to be embodying it, performing it\u2014it\u2019s going to be me and the audience in real time. And for some reason, that feels less exposing than were I to sit down and write a memoir, the idea of which every fibre of my being is allergic to. But I\u2019ll perform a memoir!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research is very important. There are a lot of things which I intuit. And as I get older I have more and more material. More and more experience. I may have lived something or feel I have a strong intuitive grasp of something, which tells me that I\u2019m capable of getting something right on the inside of it, but it also tells me not to take for granted that I have all the information that I need. To me, that is always an indication that I have a lot of learning to do. I\u2019m always wanting to put something that I may understand intuitively into a larger context. And I want to get it right, because I think it does not make itself. I need to learn a whole lot so that I have a grasp of a subject so that the characters can have maybe a faulty grasp or a contradictory grasp. But I know the whole picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> Kind of learning the rules so you can break them, even if it\u2019s through the characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> Exactly. I think that\u2019s also part of the trust that is necessary between writer and reader. I take that trust very seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya: To finish up, are there any books, plays, or films you have enjoyed recently?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> I just saw a play at Crow\u2019s Theatre here in Toronto. It\u2019s called Dinner with the Duchess <\/em>and it\u2019s by Nick Green. The writing and the acting and the production were absolutely a tour de force. There are probably no more than five shows I have ever seen in my lifetime where I would use that descriptor. It was absolutely great. I loved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the books I read are non-fiction. There\u2019s a book that I read fairly recently, which I absolutely loved. It\u2019s called The Utopia of Rules<\/em>. It\u2019s all about the rise of bureaucracy. It\u2019s by an author named David Graeber, who is unfortunately deceased. He died during Covid at quite a young age. But it\u2019s a book that says a lot about our world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya:<\/strong> I feel that a book about bureaucracy would definitely go over well with an Ottawa audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann-Marie:<\/strong> Right? Absolutely. It\u2019s a book about bureaucracy and it\u2019s a page turner\u2014which sounds like a joke, but it really is! It\u2019s funny and it\u2019s incredibly smart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Department of English Language and Literature invite you to join us for the 2024-2025 Munro Beattie Lecture, \u201cImps and Imposters: Where Do Stories Come From\u201d<\/a>, with author, actor, and playwright, Ann-Marie MacDonald. It will take place at 7:30 pm on February 4 at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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By Maya Chorney Portrait by Travis Silverman; Front Cover of Ann-Marie MacDonald\u2019s 2022 Novel Fayne In advance of the annual Munro Beattie Lecture on February 4, acclaimed author, actor, and playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald sat down with English student Maya Chorney to discuss her multidisciplinary career, the power of storytelling, and the political dimensions of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[33,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-theatre-performance"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25878"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27537,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878\/revisions\/27537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}