Post-Show Thoughts: True Crime, presented by The Ecstasy
Saturday, April 25, 2026 ~ Vancouver, BC
Paraphrasing Noel Coward: 'I went to a marvelous play'.
For me, the play is/was about the parallels and overlaps between what actors do and what con artists do. So much of each is about becoming. Becoming someone else. Inventing them. Inhabiting them. Living as them for a period of time ranging from a few moments to a lifetime, on a case-by-case basis.
Why is that? Other than the obvious: monetary reasons. There are more personal, deeper, basic ones: to be loved, adored, power/ego, opportunity knocked, vocation/gravity, you name it.
And when you’re both the writer and actor*, weaving in enough (or more) actual truth to make the story sound plausible, how as an audience member do you discern what is fact from fiction? After all, whether actor or grifter, it’s all REAL. It has to be, otherwise your audience, which in an intimate space such as Room 216 in Vancouver's old City Centre Motor Hotel building, includes people who might know you some, and part of the story you’re telling is about a journey of discovery and creation in which your grasp of the important things in your real-life life becomes tenuous being told by you, in the first person, and you’re taking your audience along for the ride, or, as a person skilled in presenting fiction as truth, taking the audience for a ride. When you’re Torquil Campbell (with his amazing set of lungs), these are not mutually exclusive. True. Crime. Actor/Audience 101: Suspension of Disbelief. When you know you are audience, you know you’re on the receiving end of a performance. When you don’t, you’re a mark.
Actors pretend to be other people ALL the time - trying out an accent, a persona, a different name - in restaurants, placing and receiving takeaway orders, a chance conversation with a stranger anytime, anywhere - no truth, no crime; no harm, no foul.
Then think back about all the times you have had such experiences in your life (especially in Actor Towns), and just for the sake of this little mental experiment, consider whether you might have been a guinea pig as audience or mark. Is it a tiny bit titillating? Unsettling? Why not both? And when you think about people you're close with in your own reality: how well can a person REALLY and truly know another person?
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