His fiction has been published in Canadian magazines, including Grain, The Dalhousie Review, and NeWest Review. His collection of short stories, Blind Man’s Drum, was a finalist for Saskatchewan Book Awards, and his short story, "Wars and Rumours of Wars," a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Humour. He has been produced by Canadian Broadcasting Company, written the foreword to sixteen publications of new plays, and penned lyrics for plays produced in Barcelona and Canada. His play Friends was published by Red Deer Press.
During his twelve year tenure as an artistic director of Twenty-fifth Street Theatre in Saskatoon, Tom gained a strong reputation for developing and producing original Canada plays, and was the founder of the Saskatoon International Fringe.
In 2008, Tom became the artistic director of Tant per Tant Theatre, developing, directing, and exchanging plays between Canada and Catalonia. His accomplishments include directing a critically acclaimed all-female version of The Iliad for Festival de Teatro Clásico de Mérida and a multi-lingual production of Marie Clements Burning Vision for Barcelona’s International Grec Festival.
He is now the Artistic Director of The Yat/Bentley Centre for Performance, an international theatre company based out of San Francisco. He divides his time between his work outside Canada and his home in Saskatoon.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, Blind Man’s Drum, published by Thistledown Press, was a series of Short Stories. At that time, almost twenty years ago, I used the name Tom Bentley. Writing initially was a way of running away from the pressures of being an artistic director of a theatre. When I began to write, spurred on by the great Canadian poet, Anne Szumigalski, I realized I could live in my aloneness. It was an interior world where I didn’t need to be an artistic leader, but was being led. I felt entirely at home.
It was then that I realized I could fully engage with the main thing that always fascinated and drove me - the connection of the inner and outer life.
The Boy Who Was Saved By Jazz is my first novel - It has challenged me in new ways. I only wrote for a few years twenty years ago and then found myself back in the theatre. During those few years my focus was trying to discover what was beneath language. Strange way to get back into language but there we are.
This book feels different in that I am not involved with results. It feels honest and vulnerable. I am not hiding behind humour. I have been in the ‘zone’ and am willing to expose by eccentricities.
2 - How did you come to short stories first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I love the work of Alan Bennett. I loved how he suggested so much in the turn of a phrase. I am a bit of a sensationalist I think, and I enjoyed exposing the quick and dirty bizarre part of my mind that was challenged in short story writing.
Also - my life’s work has been inspired by the theatre training of my mentor Yat Malmgren, who is known for how he developed one of the most significant approaches to acting. That work has guided me. It has taken me to a roadmap I’ve been developing and now teach internationally called Character Transformation. Yat’s original title for it is ‘The Psychology of Movement’. The premise of the work is that it takes us to the unknown in ourselves, allowing us to view the world through others’ eyes, which I believe is essential in these troubled times.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
A first draft is usually a quick process. I let it flow. I don’t care if it’s accurate. I try to find the essence. I feel it emotionally and write emotionally. I love secrets. Then comes the hard part - the rewrites. Trying to say what needs to be said - and trying hard not to fall into the state of being clever, or anticipating what people might think.
4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I meet the human being before the circumstance in prose. I ask the questions - Who are you? Who are you trying to be? And how are you perceived? And I know that these three questions provide very different answers. Then comes the detective work. And them I fold in given circumstances and relationships that challenge the characters the most. I
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes, I love reading and performing. My short stories are longing to be read out loud. I have been an actor - Including being part of BBC’s Radio Four Monday Night dramas when I was an actor in England. I’m a story teller. When I ran a theatre in Canada, the administrative staff wouldn’t start work until I told them a story.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
How can get out of the pockets of ourselves?
How can we discover the unknown in ourselves?
How can we communicate beneath borders and language?
How can yield down the resistances and conflicts of our time rather than taking a sledgehammer?
How can we contribute as artists and let go of the ever present ego?
How can we live within our contradictions.
Can we experience the world upside down?
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think I may have responded to this above, but would add:
The current conditions of the world demand that the role of the artist is to be the one of the healthiest persons in society - Emotionally psychologically, spiritually, physically. And that our greatest tool is one of empathy. As a writer I do not believe we should judge. We should live within the contradictions.
We can produce a change. We must.
And always, the writer must come from love. That gives us the freedom and license to explore hate.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It helps enormously. As a director of theatre I tried hard to match the playwright with the best dramaturge for the project.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Listen deeply.
In order to see you must be willing to be seen.
Never look once - Look again and again.
There are no straight lines in creativity.
Be guided by mystery and wonder. What you don’t know is magnificent.
Live below your personality.
Love the chaos.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel to directing to playwriting)? What do you see as the appeal?
I’m a cheap sensationalist. I bounce well. If you are stuck within a single medium, you can get lost in form. Different ways into the artistic questions are important. In fact, the question is often more important for the writer than the answer.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I am obsessed for several weeks. I wake up thinking - is too early to get up and start writing? Then I leave it entirely. It is when my dreams start guiding me that I’m back. I try to write for few hours in the morning before anything else.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I have a hard time not blaming myself for a stall. I try to allow myself to live in the insecurity fully.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Gas fumes. My true home - Many years ago.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
This book comes from the inner experience of music. Between the notes, within the transitions of chords, there is a world that is entirely awake. It is where I feel comfortable. Obviously my career in the theatre has also influenced my work. What is active? What is really going on?
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Poetry is very important. Problem is that I’ve always felt unworthy to be a poet myself. I feel like a coward.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I want to perform my own work. I want to bring my acting, writing, directing, music, and teaching under one umbrella. I want to turn the corner and meet someone amazing who challenges me - revolutionizes me - And takes me on an artistic voyage I never thought possible. I want to live in my beloved Catalonia. I want to direct Medea.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Coming to writing is late for me. I do know that if I wasn’t an artist, and I’ve been employed as an artist from the age of sixteen, I’d be utterly lost. I’ve been a single parent most of my life. That has been my other joy. Maybe a teacher, although all the vocation tests I took at school said I’d be best suited as a forest ranger. Once it came back as a light house keeper
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It was a time when I didn’t have to take care of anybody - I could enter my own mysteries, and that includes the pain.
19 - What
was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I re-read Crime and Punishment last week. I tend to re-read books - Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shakespeare. I saw The Taste of Things.
20 - What are you currently working on?
The Naked Reveal - something I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for years. I started it in New York last summer and can’t stop. It is about the creative process, but reads in part like a novel, memoir, and a new way of looking at acting in the 21st century.
Almost a Therapist - a series I am writing with my daughter about a therapist who needs therapy badly.
Metamorphosis By Chaos - a series of short stories about the eccentricities of loneliness.
Almost a Hamlet - a collaboration about ‘something’s rotten .…’
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