In The Originals, Niall Patrick McNeil retraces his roots at Caravan Farm Theatre
New DOXA Documentary Film Festival feature tells the incredible story of the Armstrong company, and how spending childhood summers there inspired McNeil’s own art-making
Filmmaker Niall Patrick McNeil exits the log cabin where he once spent his summers at Caravan Farm Theatre.
A scene of Caravan’s original horsedrawn theatre troupe in the 1970s, from The Originals.
The Originals screens at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival on May 3 at 7 pm at VIFF Centre and May 11 at 11:45 am at SFU Woodward’s
THE TREES, SUN, and land. Puppets, masks, and music. Cows, goats, and horses. Love, family, and friends.
When Vancouver artist Niall Patrick McNeil reflects on his long history with Caravan Farm Theatre, these are some of the things that he most warmly remembers.
The actor and Down Syndrome trailblazer spent most of his childhood summers at the legendary outdoor theatre and acreage in B.C.’s interior, surrounded by artists and their kids. And it had a profound effect on his work as an artist—not to mention on his notions of family and community.
Now McNeil has paid tribute to the unique B.C. company with the film The Originals. In the new work premiering at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, he travels back to the farm and talks to the first founders of a project that started out in 1972 as a nomadic, Clydesdale-horsedrawn-carriage troupe. In 1978, it established headquarters at a farm just outside of Armstrong, a site where it still hosts popular outdoor theatre performances today.
Caravan’s ties to the theatre community in Vancouver run deep—including well-known names like Peter and Melody Anderson, who met through the troupe and appear in interviews with McNeil. McNeil also speaks to Paul Kirby, who with his wife Nans founded the original Caravan Stage Company before leaving to run the barge-based, internationally touring Amara Zee theatre. Stage artists Nick Hutchinson and Molly March continued on in Armstrong to build the working farm and outdoor theatre company.
What we learn in The Originals is that the wildly unfettered creative freedom and nurturing, inclusive environment of the communal farm had a direct impact on McNeil. He’s gone on to appear in everything from Leaky Heaven Circus productions to Neworld Theatre’s King Arthur’s Night, cowritten with Marcus Youssef, at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
“It’s something I actually was thinking about a long time, my ideas around the farm, being there since my childhood, as a baby,” McNeil reflects of his new film. He’s speaking in an interview at his East Vancouver home, alongside codirector and award-winning cinematographer Mike McKinlay. “They were like family and trust, with music and singing—it’s been like this forever for me. I felt a really warm welcome there.”
And so the film becomes not only the incredible story of Caravan but of McNeil’s roots as a performer and the process of making his first film. His own footage mixes with McKinlay’s, who follows McNeil as he interviews old friends and mentors. As McNeil says in the new documentary premiering at DOXA, “I want to show the rest of the world that Caravan taught me to be an artist.”
In an early shot in the film, we see McNeil walk out the door of one of the site’s original old, log cabins, where he bunked for so many summers growing up. He reports the structure is now gone—as many of Caravan’s aging original buildings are slated for removal, making way for more modern facilities.
McKinlay says The Originals was a chance to capture the magical world of the farm, and the legendary stories around it, before they disappear.
“One of the reasons we wanted to make the movie was because of the changes that are going on—a whole kind of era being removed and replaced,” the codirector says. “It was definitely something we wanted to do: document this space that was locked in time for so long. Niall could capture these memories and relive these memories through these people who were a huge part of his life.”
The Originals weaves together interviews of their visit to the camp today with sweeping drone shots of the 80-acre, forest-wrapped site and a wealth of archival snapshots and Super 8 film, some of it never previously seen. In many old photographs, a little McNeil smiles widely—embraced by his mother and longtime Caravan artist Joan McNeil, sitting at picnic tables with the other children, riding a horse, and wearing various costumes in the plays that often involved the kids. As a youngster, McNeil performed in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Bull by the Horns, and Strange Medicine.
“Going there and learning the story through Niall: it really allowed me to realize how much all those people inspired Niall to do all the stuff he does now,” says McKinlay. He had first met McNeil on the set for director Marie Clements’s Lay Down Your Heart, an NFB film that playfully profiled McNeil’s art and chosen family. “It was incredible to see where Niall’s artistic mindset comes from—his inspiration and his confidence to just do all of the theatre he does now. It's so rooted in that place.”
Shooting the film also gave McKinlay a taste of what it was like to live on the farm, surrounded by wildlife and birds, each summer.
“I got to sleep in one of the cabins while we were there and it’s this little, miniature house that’s the size of a bed,” the artist relates. “So it just takes you right back to summer camp.”
The process has been an eye-opening one for McKinlay, a cinematographer on documentaries such as the recent Part of the Pack. He came onto The Originals at first to mentor McNeil on how to use camera equipment, later stepping into codirecting—and learning from his partner on the film.
“Niall was actually teaching me a lot about his artistic process,” McKinlay says. “I’ve looked at filmmaking from a much different perspective, during and after making this movie with him—just from the way that Niall looks at the world, and the way that he approaches it, the way he shoots and looks at colour and characters. It was actually really, really refreshing and just a very pure approach to storytelling.”
As for McNeil, the process, and the partnership, has inspired him as well. “I’ve been doing my artistic practice for 16 years. My goal is to retire at 68,” he says.
But for the immediate future he has one objective: “I want to make more movies with this guy,” he says with a smile, pointing to McKinley. 
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