When Micah Jondel DeShazer was 20 years old, his roommate’s mother sent him a casting call for The Flick: a three-hour play which had just finished its off-Broadway run.
“The casting call described me perfectly,” he said. “It was calling for a Black male that was 20 years old, with a European flair, who wore glasses and worked at a movie theatre. I was literally all of those things at that exact time.”
DeShazer booked the role in 2013. It was his first professional theatre gig and remains one of his favourite moments as a performer.
“There’s something very special about reading a casting call and saying, ‘Oh my God, that’s me,’” he said.
Since The Flick, which Stray Cat Theatre staged in 2013 in Tempe, Ariz., DeShazer has acted, danced and performed a host of other live theatre roles. His artistry has taken him across Los Angeles, Chicago and Wisconsin. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, he also worked between New York City, New Jersey and Virginia.
DeShazer studied five years of music and theatre at Grand Canyon University, after spending one year studying film at Scottsdale Community College.
Filmmaking has an “atypical creation process that’s been done really well,” DeShazer said, but it doesn’t compare to the “buzz” of live audiences.
“[Audiences] respond in a way you didn’t expect them to, or it affects you differently and you let that inform how the story folds out on stage. The live-ness of it all was something that I was really keen on holding on to.”
DeShazer moved to Ottawa in 2021 and hasn’t looked back. As the artistic director of the Theatre Artists’ Co-operative: the Independent Collective Series — or TACTICS — a theatre collective helping local artists stage their works at a semi-professional level, his focus on elevating local theatre productions is already making an impact
Coupled with a batch of director credits — uOttawa Theatre Club’s December production of Heathers: The Musical, Terminally Ill at Ottawa’s undercurrents festival in February and Orpheus Musical Theatre’s March run of Dreamgirls — DeShazer is emerging as a leader in the Ottawa theatre community.
Thrust into leadership
“I find myself often accepting and being thrust into leadership positions in many facets of my life,” he said in an interview with the Charlatan at a Feb. 21 Dreamgirls rehearsal. “I’ve come to really respect and enjoy the process of leading a team.”
It was nine days before Dreamgirls’ opening night and DeShazer directed a full run-through of the show. He sometimes halted rehearsal to guide stage exits and entrances. Actors occasionally forgot their lines, but he quickly read them from the script.
In her on-stage musical debut, Patrice Xavier played Effie White, the talented but temperamental lead singer of The Dreams, the R&B trio Dreamgirls follows on their journey to stardom.
“[DeShazer] really lets us follow our instinct,” Xavier said. “If there’s anything to give advice on, he’ll step up and tell us. But he lets us choose how we want to make the characters speak and feel.”
Dreamgirls’ music director Sabrina Tang added, “He likes to put a lot of responsibility on the actor and he likes to give room to play.”
DeShazer calls himself a “collaborator” who “make[s] a bigger picture” out of the production team’s input.
“As a leader, I like to fill in the gaps,” he said. “If someone has a skillset they’re very confident and secure in, I want them to bring that to the table.”
“I was just the one who put together all the pieces in the puzzle,” DeShazer said in a speech at the Dreamgirls dress rehearsal on Feb. 29, the eve of opening night.
The show was more complete at the dress rehearsal than it was eight days prior: there were minimal line fumbles and the rehearsal pianist was replaced by a 10-piece orchestra, emitting powerful trumpet blasts and animated percussion for every number.
“That’s what dress rehearsals are for,” he said.
Excellence over perfection
With a laugh, The University of Ottawa Theatre Club’s president Sydney Williams said she finds DeShazer to be a “perfectionist,” which she first noticed when he directed Heathers.
“He loves having cast input and that collaboration […] but he wants the show to be the best it can be.”
Rather than referring to himself as a perfectionist, DeShazer prefers to say that he strives for excellence.
“Theatre is a craft that I love and I’ve spent a lot of time with. There’s a level of perfectionism that I hope to achieve,” he said. “More so than perfectionism, I think I’m more interested in excellence.”
DeShazer’s work with TACTICS strives to bring local theatre productions a little closer to perfection — or at least to a middle ground between festival and professional shows.
“A lot of local Ottawa-based festivals are restricted to anything an hour or less. The production value itself is usually on the lower side,” DeShazer said. “On the opposite side, we have well-established professional theatres like the Great Canadian Theatre Company or the National Arts Centre.”
Formed in 2013, TACTICS provides resources, such as funding and rehearsal space, for local theatre projects.
“There’s a gap in the artistic journey for local artists here, and we want to fill that,” DeShazer said.
Local artists Silas Chinsen and Sandy Gibson received funding from TACTICS in 2023 for their original sci-fi musical, One Small Misstep.
“They covered our recording, rehearsal and venue costs,” Chinsen said. “They made it easier for us to focus on the art side of things.”
A One Small Misstep cast recording was released on Oct. 4 2023, and cast members performed songs from the show at the Rainbow Bistro in November.
Levity Theatre Co. also worked with TACTICS last year to help stage its play, Label. Co-owner Caity Smyck recalled their experience as not necessarily smooth sailing.
Smyck said they were given the option to postpone their TACTICS workshop with a promise of double the funding, but when the time came last November, they did not receive the additional funds.
“If I could give [the experience] one word, I would say it was ‘difficult,’” Smyck said.
DeShazer said TACTICS received less grant funding this season than in previous years, adding that governments were more eager to fund the arts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were unable to see that through,” he added about working with Levity. “That was definitely a failure and a shortsight on my part.”
TACTICS is currently on hiatus to broaden its funding partners, but DeShazer said TACTICS will return to its regular operations in August.
The Ottawa theatre community
While the local theatre industry is full of talent, it also has its fair share of obstacles for those seeking success.
Eve Beauchamp, co-founder of Levity Theatre Co., said it is challenging to “take on many roles” in a theatre production — something they said is necessary in the Ottawa theatre community.
“The biggest thing that comes up in this community is the fact that if you want to work, you have to produce your own work,” they said. “It is quite difficult to be successful as an individual artist.”
Smyck added it is especially difficult for emerging artists to find work because of the “insularness” within theatre organizations.
“There’s a lot of inviting people in and working with the people that you know,” Smyck said. “That makes it very difficult to make headway and get in — you don’t see a lot of open calls for actors or directors.”
Smyck said Levity made a decision early on to have open calls for its productions, accepting applications for stage managers, actors and more as a way of “extending out to the community.”
Ottawa’s theatre scene is “very young,” with plenty of new ideas, DeShazer said.
“The community is calling for diverse stories, diverse faces on stage and diverse ideas. I’m really excited to see that continue to blossom,” he said. “There’s a very exciting air that both creatives and audiences are eager to partake in.”
DeShazer said working with TACTICS is his first step to contributing toward the Ottawa theatre community, as well as working with already-established companies.
“I’m not interested in starting a new company — more so maintaining what is already in effect,” he said. “I’m going to network personally and continue to collaborate with as many different companies as possible.”
DeShazer said he hopes to be a “bridge for the overarching community” to Ottawa theatre scene newcomers as well as current artists.
“Not only can we then share audiences and help diversify our community, but we can also just prove to each other that this community is a little larger than we thought.”
New projects, similar themes
In the meantime, DeShazer co-wrote Trainwreck with Canadian singer-songwriter Malia Rogers. They previously worked together in the medical dramedy Terminally Ill.
Trainwreck’s first act played at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in June. DeShazer said they plan to pitch the full show to The Musical Stage Co. in Toronto.
“It’s a show about a group of friends coping with adulthood and heavy changes in their lives,” DeShazer said.
Trainwreck follows a five-piece college friend group reunited on a camping trip. It’s an emotionally heavy show, with lyrics tugging at bittersweet themes: nostalgia, hoping and growing up.
DeShazer is no stranger to shows with heavy themes.
Heathers explores teen suicide, Terminally Ill has a child abuse subplot and Dreamgirls highlights the pitfalls of betrayal and fame.
Trainwreck’s characters are flawed, and faced with the harsh reality that adulthood is not the sunny, anything-is-possible future they hoped for.
“They actually end up finally having to face core trauma they’ve been avoiding all along,” DeShazer said. “My rule when taking a fun approach in a narrative that has serious pockets is to make sure everything we do still finds its grounds.
“That’s the interesting thing in humanity. When we look around there’s some weird characters in the world. There is always someone who is hyper-accentuated in some way shape or form,” he said, “But we all still feel very real things.”
Featured image by Alexa Mackie