On the airwaves he’s known as the Hungarian Heartthrob.
But outside of his 102.9 CFAR gig, Raphael Saray is quietly earning himself another title: proficient playwright.
He has plowed the fertile soil of his witty, resourceful imagination to bring not one, not two, but seven plays to the stage.
“I always had a lot of ideas for scenes and jokes, and I was raised by TV,” says Saray, 32, describing the origins of his side career. “Plus going to Catholic mass, which has a lot of theatrical elements to it. So that mixed with wrestling, SNL [Saturday Night Live], The Simpsons and cable news formed my style and voice. But I like a live crowd and the magic that theatre can have when it’s done well.”
A Winnipeg native, Saray studied and acted in plays as a student at the University of Manitoba. While fostering his love for the medium, he had to admit his acting chops were not up to snuff.
“My skill was basically goofing off during rehearsals,” he says.
Saray’s other skill lies in writing. He penned his first play, Waiting for Trudeau, for the U of M’s theatre company. It was an homage to the celebrated play Waiting for Godot, in which characters endlessly wait
for the arrival of someone who never shows up.
In Saray’s version, a guy and a girl go out looking for former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. In the process they meet an eclectic series of characters, including the person who invented pogs (those circular cardboard discs that were all the rage in the 1990s) and a renowned shin and ankle model.
“I just started typing out dialogue one day and threw a crude plot around it,” he recalls. “I showed it to some people and they helped direct, which I’m weak at. So we put it on at school and people kept asking,
‘What’s the next one?’”
Saray developed such a following that in 2006 he cofounded a small theatre company called the Miracle Violence Connection (MVC). It consists mainly of former U of M theatre and film students, and some artistic people they met along the way.
MVC began renting out small venues to stage Saray’s plays, three of which reached the famed Winnipeg Fringe Festival.
When Saray moved to Flin Flon to become a CFAR radio personality in 2008, he continued to write and fund productions for the festival.
His seventh effort, Ellie and David’s Parents, debuts Wednesday at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.
“[It’s] a dramedy about two people who are looking for a change,” Saray explains. “They meet at a social and decide to have children despite [the fact] that they don’t have any real passion to be a mom and dad. They are MTV/MuchMusic generation types in that they don’t have a huge emotional investment in much. But they have kids and we see how they evolve. The main theme is how in trying to find their own identity, they lost it by having kids. They are no longer Bailey and Enzo. They are Ellie and David’s Parents.”
At this point, Saray’s career as a playwright is a labour of love, with MVC striving only to break even on its productions.
Still, the natural question is whether he might one day leave his radio career behind – retire the Hungarian Heartthrob – in order to become a full-time playwright.
Saray is not sure about that one.
“I get four hours and live microphone every day, so that kind of forum is tough to beat,” he notes. “I’d love to write full-time, but it’s just not logistically possible. To be a full-time Canadian playwright, it’s an endless parade of workshops, plus you have to apply for grants, and I don’t really want the government telling me what art is or isn’t.”
Local stage
Raphael Saray’s plays may be performed in Winnipeg, but he’s no stranger to local theatregoers.
He joined Flin Flon’s rich arts scene with a role in the Flin Flon Community Choir’s celebrated 2015 production of Les Misérables.
“[It] was a blast and a challenge since I can’t sing,” Saray admits. “But [the choir’s] Crystal and Mark Kolt patiently coached me up so I could be passable.”
He has also appeared in two productions by local theatre troupe Ham Sandwich: Harvey and Over the River and Through the Woods.
“I’m much [more] comfortable in non-musical theatre,” says Saray. “I get mostly character actor parts, which is great. I call it ‘blue-collar leading man.’”
