What was your response on hearing that your play had been selected for the NotaBle Acts mainstage?

Surprised! I was also very excited, of course, and grateful! It’s a dream come true to get to see the characters and silly scenarios I imagined in my head come to life on the stage. Especially for a story as fantastical and visually loaded as Influentia. 

Tell us a bit about how Influentia came to be?

This play began as class assignment during a busy semester at UNB. Looking back through an old chat with a friend, I wrote about its shaky beginnings by stating that I was all-caps, quadruple-o  DOOOOMED if I did not start writing something, anything, that night. The whole thing kind of tumbled out all at once into my messy notebook. It sounds a bit woo-woo, but it was a story ready to be born. It was an amalgamation of life experiences—art school, therapy visits, and Latin classes mixed with Instagram bullies, practicing tarot, and a summer of feeding the local crows—stewing deep in my subconscious and ready for an outlet. 

The play was first featured as a reading at the 2022 festival, and now is back as a mainstage production this year. What’s the development process been like for the play? What have the ups and downs been?

I think it was one of those situations when delayed gratification turned out to be a good thing! While I was a little disappointed that Influentia didn’t win a spot on the stage back in 2022, the experience and positive feedback I received having it read in Play Out Loud have made me much more confident to see my script on the Mainstage this season. I especially loved being able to talk world-building and magic with my assigned dramaturge, Matthew Heiti. I was worried initially that my story about demons and invisible magpies might not be taken seriously as a meaningful social commentary, but that never happened at all! 

How does your background as an artist and student of Classical literature inform the play?

In my experience, scarcity mindset in the arts community is huge, and with it comes a lot of covert jealousy. Social media often exasperates this, but sites like Instagram and TikTok are still coveted as a way to establish oneself in the arts world and establish a customer base. This environment can breed the kind of frazzled desperation that my main character, Darah, feels throughout Influentia. I’ve unfortunately witnessed fellow artists burn themselves out trying to get their “social numbers” up at the cost of their own art and authenticity. 

This may seem like a new phenomenon, but attention has always meant power and people have gone to great lengths to obtain it. Cleopatra became the pop culture icon she is today (for better or for worse) by forcing herself to be seen. She was a master at cultivating an image for herself and playing the influence game, which is why I chose her as the historical idol in my script. As a classical history major, I often speculate how the ancients might react to today’s climate, and I believe that Cleopatra would have put the Kardashians to shame.

Influentia features a number of characters who meet at a mental health support group, which is not what most might expect when they hear the play is a comedy. How do you see comedy coming out of such a setting, and what is its role in the play?

Comedy and coping go hand in hand. Laughter has the ability to take some of pain’s power away and it highlights the resilience of humans in the face of struggle. Who hasn’t had some situation go so terribly awry that the only thing left to do was laugh? A bit of humour creates connection and allows us to navigate difficult emotional experiences with an altered perspective. This makes a therapy group a natural place to cultivate it. 

As someone who’s struggled myself, it’s also important to me to depict people with mental health challenges as more than just the doom-and-gloom of their illnesses. The characters in my play still have a long way to go on their healing journey, and while that may be their priority, recovery is not their whole identity. They can make art, new friends, have side adventures with ancient, nefarious entities, and laugh at themselves as they try to find a better way to cope with this messed-up world.