We had conversations at Hollywood North with many Canadian content creators who are finally getting the chance to tell their own stories. With the success of recent shows like Nirvana: The Band, The Show, The Movie and Heated Rivalry, it’s been proven that international audiences love Canadian stories if they’re entertaining. There are plenty of amazing stories out there that should be made into amazing television programs. Listen to the CBC Personally Presents Discount Dave and the Fix; you’ll hear a great example of that.
We had a conversation with actor, writer and podcaster Rebecca Auerbach.
Pictured above, Rebecca with director, Aviva Armour-Ostroff at the Tribeca Audio Festival.
HNMAG: You grew up in Vancouver.
Rebecca Auerbach: I did. I grew up there. On the west side. Kits, Point Grey area. I went to Byng.
HNMAG: Lord Byng. That’s good. After that, you went to Studio 58 at Langara, right?
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes, I certainly did. My alma mater. Those were the days.
HNMAG: Were you always a performer?
Rebecca Auerbach: I was, yeah, from an early age. I remember when I kind of got bit by the whole thing. I was in grade four.
HNMAG: Yeah, it’s early.
Rebecca Auerbach: I auditioned for the school play, and I’ll never forget auditioning in the gym, and I was playing a bopper or something. I said “like, for sure”. Then everybody erupted in laughter and I thought, whoa, what is this feeling? It was great. What a dopamine hit. I’ve continued to chase it. Which is evident when you listen to the podcast.
HNMAG: You had the actor’s life after Langara. You were doing theatre. Any film and TV?
Rebecca Auerbach: I was just doing theatre at the start, later I got into commercials, once I moved to Toronto.
HNMAG: You were also working as a server.
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes, I have been a server virtually since I was a teenager.
HNMAG: It’s good to have that experience.
Rebecca Auerbach: The money’s good. It’s a great thing to fall back on and and it worked with my lifestyle at the time. It would not work with my lifestyle now. So I have not done it in a long time and I’m quite happy about that.
HNMAG: Why did you leave Vancouver?
Rebecca Auerbach: My personal life was a bit tricky and my dear, dear person, had passed away. That part of my life inspired episode two of the podcast series.
I went to visit friends in Toronto and his parents, because he was originally from Toronto.
HNMAG: Okay.
Rebecca Auerbach: My friend suggested I move here. There’s more theatre here.
HNMAG: True.
Rebecca Auerbach: I was grieving and really messed up. I literally went back to Vancouver after this two week visit, sold everything I owned and I moved to Toronto. So it really was grief that got me to Toronto. It wasn’t my career or anything like that, but I stayed.
HNMAG: Except for a brief stay in New York.
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes, 2010, I was in New York for a a while. I had applied for my green card and I was going down to check it out and I had gone to see the Plant Lady who had set me on the straight and narrow, Episode 3 explains who the Plant Lady is.
HNMAG: You moved to Toronto, um, and were in New York for in 2010.
Rebecca Auerbach: I did not get my green card. I came back. It was not in the cards for me.
HNMAG: At least in Canada, you had real health care.
Rebecca Auerbach: I asked an actor in New York – what do you do if you get sick? And they’re like, you don’t. You just don’t. I was like, okay. Right. Gotcha. But it was definitely a full circle moment for me premiering the podcast series at Tribeca. After my experience being in New York with no prospects and then returning with this incredible opportunity, it was…
HNMAG: Triumphant.
Rebecca Auerbach: It was definitely triumphant for that reason. I was walking around saying, Wow, I’m actually here for work. Wild. I guess The Plant Lady was right after all.
HNMAG: There you go. You have to just have faith.
Rebecca Auerbach: Just took a little while longer.
HNMAG: Have you considered making Discount Dave and the Fix into a TV show?
Rebecca Auerbach: I’ve thought about that a lot and I have been getting a lot of people telling me that it needs to be a TV series. I think it would work best as a Limited Series. I did write a feature screenplay version of it. I adapted it from the play. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it was a play first, then I pitched it as a podcast to CBC, they were jazzed and picked it up for 5 episodes. Which was amazing because I had to learn about cliffhangers and breaking it up into episodes helped me see it as a TV series. So I think that’s the next step.
HNMAG: Initially, it was a feature film?
Rebecca Auerbach: No, it was a play. I did it last year in Toronto as a workshop production directed and dramaturged by Aviva Armour-Ostroff who also directed the podcast. We worked closely for years on the story. We first did it at the Edmonton fringe and then I did some rewrites and did a version of it at The Vault Creation Lab in Toronto. The CBC folks got to come see it there.
HNMAG: Was it a one-woman show?
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes.
HNMAG: Like the podcast, you do all the voices.
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes, I play all the characters. For the podcast version, we made some significant changes structurally to it, to make it more sustainable for the ear and it really benefited the story. Making the podcast was a blessing for the story. It was awesome. I also want to tour the play. It’s an 85-minute solo show that’s a real pressure cooker ride. But basically, I learned so much about the story from writing the podcast that now I need to write a new draft of the play. And a TV pilot. There’s so much to do!
HNMAG: After the one woman show, you adapted that to a screenplay?
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes, I adapted it mostly as an exercise, I had just won the Cayle Chernin Award for theatre in 2024-
HNMAG: –Congrats.
Rebecca Auerbach: Thank you, and I was provided with a mentor so I chose the filmmaker, writer and performer, Valerie Buhagiar. So she helped me adapt it into a feature. I was going to start work on the second draft of it with her notes, but then the podcast happened.
HNMAG: From the title, you think it’s just going to be a story about some David Lee Roth scammer. And then it moves on. It’s not really even about that.
Rebecca Auerbach: No, it’s not. It’s almost a bait and switch, right?
HNMAG: Yeah. What’s next on the horizon?
Rebecca Auerbach: I am actually in a new musical stage show based on the music of the Tragically Hip. It’s called It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken.
HNMAG: In 2024 Mike Downie brought his documentary No Dress Rehearsal to the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). We had a conversation with him.
Rebecca Auerbach: Oh, amazing.
HNMAG: Yeah, it was.
Rebecca Auerbach: I got to meet Mike at the show, he came, which was really nice and we had a photo and a nice introduction. It’s produced by Michael Rubinoff, who gave us Come From Away.
HNMAG: Are you going to tour Canada?
Rebecca Auerbach: We’ll go to a few places in the country for sure. It was a smash hit. The story is really poignant, exploring themes of home, belonging, and identity. It’s not about the Tragically Hip.
HNMAG: It features their music.
Rebecca Auerbach: Yes, and the Hip fans who have seen it and hold this music so dear, have given it their stamp of approval. There are some great performances.
You probably still have questions about the Discount Dave story. What happened to that guy? Does it have anything to do with the Fixx, that early 80’s british rock band? What’s the deal with the Plant Lady mentioned a few times? To get those answers, you’ll just have to listen to the podcast. This is a unique article for Hollywood North because we are getting in on the ground floor. Rebecca Auerbach is a very talented performer and writer. We have confidence that Discount Dave and the Fix will make it to our television screens and if we’re wrong, that’s a huge miss.