Last week I shared a story that began in 2006, all about assuming another artist thought I was a hack.
Today I’m diving into the vaults again to share another paradigm-shifting experience. In 2011, ten years ago, I was invited to be part of the Tarragon Theatre’s playwrights’ unit – a yearlong programme run by Toronto’s “playwright’s theatre”.
I’m back in the fray with my new solo show, Age is a Feeling. I got a commission from Soho Theatre – such a dream, especially after literally trying to get them to notice me since 2016.
Every couple weeks I meet with their associate director Adam. He’s a great dramaturge and director and he’s working with me as an outside eye and frankly, accountability buddy. I share the material I’ve been working on and we talk about what I should focus before our next meeting.
I heard an apocryphal tale from a fellow writer, that when Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, was broke and wanted to write a book that would make her money, she purchased a book about writing books and followed its method. That book, Eileen, won the Man Booker Prize.
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Gboyega Odubanjo is a poet and Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Hertfordshire, now based in Dagenham in London, UK.
I asked him some questions!
Norman Yeung is a writer, actor and visual artist working cross-media. Born in Guangzhou, China, he was raised in Canada and is now based between Los Angeles, Toronto and East Vancouver. He holds a BFA in Theatre/Acting from University of British Columbia and a BFA (Honours) in Film Studies from Ryerson University.
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Beau Dixon is an actor, playwright, sound designer, music director and all round renaissance man currently based in Peterborough, Canada. He’s almost certain that “theatre can prove to us that race is a myth and true art can save lives.” I asked Beau some questions!
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When I feel shy or trepidatious about putting myself out there, I think of Alice Munro.
If you’re not familiar, Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer. Residing, for the most part, in a tiny rural town, her stories were regularly published in the New Yorker, she’s written 14 collections of stories and won umpteen awards including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.
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What to do when the blush is off the rose & you no longer care for the thing you’re creating?
Today I want to discuss that moment in our creative lives when we fall out of love with a project. I think of creative projects as entities unto themselves, and as a result, we are in relationships with them.
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