Despite still being in high school yourself, you’re an old hand at the festival, having won both the high school contest and our one act contest yourself previously. What’s it like now being in the director’s seat for the school contest plays? How has your previous experience with NotaBle Acts informed your work? 

Directing for the first time has been an exciting and daunting process. The past few weeks have taught me so much and forced me to adapt in all sorts of new and interesting ways. Working with student playwrights has been such a gift. It’s a wonderful sense of deja vu, seeing someone whose shoes you were in just a couple of years ago. One thing that’s great about NotaBle is that it forms connections between artists of different experience levels. Most of what I’ve learnt comes from the theatre artists I’ve worked with in the past. I’ve always been interested in directing, but never thought that I’d do it while still in high school. Part of what gave me the confidence to apply is knowing that I have experience working with a wide variety of artists. Watching the work of people who know more than you is, in my mind, the best way to learn. I’m incredibly grateful to have been mentored by patient and understanding artists throughout my years at NotaBle and beyond. 

You’re directing both Olivia’s play and our Middle School contest winner, Burden of Proof. Tell us a bit about that play, and how you’ve approached directing it (as well as perhaps the contrast between it and Olivia’s, since they are quite different in terms of style). 

Burden of Proof is a timeless scenario; an interrogation between detective and suspect. James Stevenson, one of the playwrights, described it to me as a contained thriller. The nice thing about readings is that all the rehearsal time can be spent on the text. There isn’t the pressure to learn lines or blocking. I’ve been lucky to work with two extremely different but stylized plays that give myself and the actors so many fascinating threads to untangle. For Little Rock, we’ve had conversations about childhood trauma, historical queerness and PTSD. Whereas Burden of Proof has prompted us to dig through the script line by line and pull apart the tactics of each character. Each play presents its own challenges and I’ve been lucky to work with actors who are enthusiastic and willing to throw themselves into new work.