Edmonton Fringe: Or, How to Pace Yourself at a Theatre Festival

Forget the notion of pacing yourself. Go hard. Take the week off of work. Throw yourself headlong into the chaos of creativity. You will be amazed. You will be disappointed. You may even come away thinking you should write your own damned play because you can do better. 

This year, I saw 35 shows (31 during the festival and 4 holdovers post-festival). My favourite: Peter Pan Cometh, by Clevername Theatre from Minneapolis. It’s the writer in me who admires a script that combines elements from Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh with J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and sheds light on the perils of growing up. The parallels between addiction as an endless loop of barstool dreaming and despair, and Neverland as a place from which you cannot escape, still have me thinking. 

Here’s the thing about the Fringe. It’s an unjuried festival. People get in via a lottery. The quality is wildly varying, but there’s an energy that can’t be denied. Doors are opened, audiences show up, and sometimes magic happens.

I always come away exhausted, exhilarated, and committed to improving my own artistic practice. It’s a brave thing to make your art public. (Look at me! Look at me!) The Fringe reminds me that part of the process of getting a work to the finish line is sharing it with others even if/when it still needs polishing. As such, there’s a whole lot of bravery on display. 

Here’s to being brave.

Payphones: Let’s Communicate

There are roughly 2,000 payphones in Montreal. It’s impossible not to notice them. It’s like seeing an old mustang on the street and harkening back to a time when cars had better designs. What once was a normal sighting now stirs nostalgia.

The first working payphone was installed in Hartford, Connecticut in 1889. The story goes that William Gray, the son of Scottish immigrants, was inspired to create the payphone when his boss or neighbour (stories vary) refused to let him use their phone to call the doctor for his ailing wife. If only there was a public phone he could use!

The humble payphone became a necessity as cities grew and people began to travel. If you’re of a certain age, you have made a collect call when travelling or stood in a line outside a phone booth, waiting for someone to finish their call. 

Why has Montreal retained its payphones when most other cities in Canada have not? Every metro station in the city has payphones, and there are still phone booths on the streets. It’s as if, for the most part, a vandalism truce has been agreed upon. A call today costs .50 cents. Compared to the inflationary rise of costs of other things, that’s not bad. 

I would like to believe the payphones continue to exist because the city administrators care about those who live with economic hardships. Not everyone carries a charged smartphone in their pocket. The infrastructure already exists, so there’s no reason to get rid of them entirely. 

And in an emergency, the payphone may be the lifeline we all turn to, as its operation isn’t dependent on electricity.  

So Much Beauty!

Tulips Tulips Tulips!!  

May in Edmonton is glorious. Pushing my non-electric bike up Skunk Hollow this afternoon, I had to stop and take pictures of these perfect tulips. After I was finished, the owner of the house pulled into her driveway, and I was able to thank you for the beautiful yard she has created. 

 

New at the Newsletter Game

What would you like to see in my Newsletter? What questions do you have? Feel free to contact me. As I am technologically challenged, I’m not sure if you can “reply” to the newsletter, but I am sure you can reach me at theresa@theresashea.com and if you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter you can do it here.

Until then, may great books find you. And may you be so caught up in a narrative that you lose track of time, miss your metro stop, skip the dog walk, and forego dinner because you are utterly and entirely engrossed. As I age, I find it harder and harder to experience that dizzying obsession with a book, but oh, when it happens! I wish it for us all.  

Dealing with rejection

And then there are failures . . .

Lest it sound like everything is going my way, I had two rejections while on my “retreat.” I did not get a grant I’d applied for, and I also wasn’t accepted into a month-long writing retreat in the fall. How do I handle rejection? I focus on the FIVE MONTH period of hope and possibility that I enjoyed before the results came in. I think novelists REALLY need this hope as the time between starting a project and receiving any recognition for it is long. Applying for grants and literary opportunities keeps me hopeful. A life in the arts contains more failure than success, so “failing forward” is profoundly optimistic. 

Soon there will be flowers in Edmonton.

I’ll have finished one revision of Dog Days of Planet Earth and will likely be waiting on notes for a second edit, which means I’ll hopefully be mucking about again in The Domestics (and in my garden!). I’ll be sure to share the pain and joys of the process. Wish me luck!

I’m sending this from Edmonton, where snow still covers my backyard, but these images of March crocuses and daffodils in Gibsons are in me. 

 

Celebrating Success

I am a rewards-based person and like to celebrate literary achievements.

I’ve been an admirer of Cindy Riach’s work for some time and, on a visit to her Gibsons studio, was particularly taken with the vibrant colours and movement in her painting titled “White Bones.”

So, to celebrate the sale of Dog Days of Planet Earth, I have added another original artwork to my studio. And while the title of the painting had nothing to do with the purchase (I wanted it before I knew what it was called), I’ll admit to enjoying how White Bones and Dog Days sound together. 

Yes, “The Beachcombers” was filmed in Gibsons

Of course, THE iconic show filmed in Gibsons will always be The Beachcombers. 

For those who do not know, The Beachcombers was the longest-running Canadian tv series. With 387 episodes, the show was hugely popular,  was syndicated around the world, and ran from October 1, 1972, to December 12, 1990.  According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the half-hour family adventure show was “Widely panned by critics, [but] was nonetheless an audience favourite and was named one of Canada’s all-time best television series in a 2017 poll conducted by the Toronto International Film Festival. Watched by more than 1 million viewers per episode in its prime, the series played a pivotal role in the development of film production in British Columbia and provided an early template for uniquely Canadian content on television.”

The Beachcombers was enjoyed by viewers in the US, UK, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Malaysia, Egypt, and more. I like to think of it as the little Canadian tv series (or tugboat) that could.

Molly’s Reach is the landmark location for the show but has seen great turnover in businesses over the years and had been sitting empty for some time. The good news is that The Black Bean, a much-loved local café, recently had to relocate and decided to lease the space. Luckily for me,  the “new” Black Bean at Molly’s Reach opened days before my arrival. Hanging on the walls inside are many photos of The Beachcombers cast and crew at work. It brings back memories to see Relic, Molly, and Bruno sitting at Molly’s enjoying their bottomless drip coffees (no fancy stuff back then!).

Cut aaaaaand ACTION!

Gibsons is the setting for the Canadian crime drama series called Murder in a Small Town.

Season two was being filmed while I was there. In the show, Police Chief Karl Ahlberg (played by Donald Sutherland’s son Rossif) lives in a house at the end of the block where I was staying. In a curiously “meta” moment, I sat inside watching the recorded episodes of Season 1 on tv while Season 2 was being filmed on the street outside.

It was very fun watching all the cast and crew at work filming the show, and I was amazed by the level of collaboration that goes into tv and film. I take my laptop and write an entire world all by myself, but to re-create that world for tv and film? That takes a village. The arts industry employs a LOT of people. Watching that village at work had me looking forward to being on set when one of my own books is being filmed. A gal can dream, right? 

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Behind the Scenes

Almost every writer has more than one novel in progress

My fourth novel-in-progress, The Domestics, examines the experience of young Irish women arriving in New York to work as domestic servants in the late 19th century.

The above image perfectly captures what writing a draft can look and feel like. Is the boat half sunk or half floating? What happened to my oars?

What’s so Special About Gibsons?

The decision to move to Gibsons from Edmonton in 2004, when our kids were 6, 4, and 2, and the 18 months we lived there, has had a lasting impact on our family. That time was chaotic and wonderful and stressful and fun and memorable. When some money we’d expected and been promised didn’t arrive (long story), we found ourselves in a difficult financial situation, otherwise known as being broke. Returning to Edmonton seemed the sensible thing to do. We knew we had work there. We had family and friends there too. But it was hard to leave the mountains and the sea.

Gibsons remains the most beautiful place I have ever lived. In the summer of 2005, we swam in the sea every day for SIX straight weeks because the weather was that wonderful.  

Twenty years later, I enjoy continued friendships and a strong connection to and love for the physical place. Dinners and walks with friends deepen important relationships, and being introduced to new people there extends my social network. It truly feels like a second home.

This trip, I arrived on February 22nd, the day after the earthquake that measured 4.8 on the Richter scale. I was a bit bummed that I had missed it. Ten days later, however, on March 3rd, I was awakened by a smaller quake that measured 4.1. If the 10 day pattern continued,  I mused, then March 14th, with the full moon, would bring another quake. A neighbour across the street attended an earthquake preparedness workshop and told me some of the items she’d place inside her emergency kit: books for her grandchildren; a game or two; a gratitude journal because if you lived though “the big one,” you’d want to find something for which to be grateful. 

March 14th arrived. The day was mainly sunny with a cool wind. Later, the full moon was obscured by clouds. I wasn’t able to see the lunar eclipse or catch sight of the blood moon. No quake interrupted my sleep.