Author: nbacts2013

A Q&A with playwright Sophie Tremblay-Pitre

Sophie Tremblay-Pitre makes her festival debut this year with two of her own plays being performed this week.

Sophie is a recent UNB graduate in Biology and Theatre. She has worked on many Fredericton theatre productions for Theatre UNB, NotaBle Acts, and Bard in the Barracks, most recently as a crew member for The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble and as Dr. Quack in The Country Wife. Ghost Writer and With Love, Josephine are the first two plays she has written, and she is very excited to invite you into the worlds she has created.

What’s it like having two of your plays included in this year’s festival?

I am very excited to have both my plays being included in the festival. It is a little terrifying because it’s a completely new experience, but I can’t wait to see what they look like on stage!

I am super happy to be so involved in NotaBle Acts this year.

Can you explain your playwriting background?

My playwriting background is of one class taken with Len Falkenstein in the fall of 2018, during which both plays were written and workshopped. Before that I had read many plays, and even more books, but I had never written anything beyond research papers.

How helpful has the festival process been for developing your skills as a writer and to that point, how have your plays developed through the process?

Working with Rob Kempson, the directors (Hannah Blizzard and Austin Taylor), and the actors has helped me develop the scripts in ways I could not have imagined. I can confidently say that the plays being produced in the festival are not the same as the ones I submitted to the contest in the spring. I’ve gained a much better understanding of the characters and storylines thanks to everyone’s insight and interpretation, and working with Rob has specifically helped me understand the choices that my characters make and why they make them.

What other play are you most excited to see/experience at this year’s festival?

All the plays look very exciting this year! I have already seen Fruit Machine, which I thought was very touching, and the choreography was excellent. I’m especially excited to see Gullywhump, because the story intrigues me and the set pieces that I’ve seen look really great. I also love to watch the site-specific plays, which allows us to see theatre in a completely different environment than what we’re used to.

Catch a performance of Sophie’s work:

Ghostwriter

What does a caffeine-addled second year Creating Writing student need to do for a good idea? Commune with long-dead relatives of course! A ghost can be a great teacher, about your past and your present.

Ghostwriter will be featured as one of four 10 minutes plays included in this year’s Taking It To The Streets series running July 29, August 1 and 2 at Cafe Beaverbrook (12-1 p.m.) and July 30-31 at Cafe Beaverbrook (7:30-8:30 p.m.)

With Love, Josephine

In a story touching on generational rifts and Canada’s divisions across class and language, a young woman learns that society and the heart rarely see eye-to-eye. Through a long-forgotten diary, she finds that her grandmother lived a parallel life, and though decades apart, takes heart from the knowledge that she is not alone.

With Love, Josephine is one of two one-act plays featured in this year’s Acting Out series which runs August 1-3 | 7:30 p.m., Memorial Hall, UNB  – 9 Bailey Drive. Tickets at the door or reserve by emailing nbacts@unb.ca; $15 regular, $10 student/senior/underemployed.

 

Greg Everett talks about Gullywhump, his NotaBle experience and the plays he’s most excited to see.

Following his 2018 one-act play Carrion Birds, which was a featured as one of two one-act plays in our 2018 festival series Acting Out, New Brunswick playwright Greg Everett is back this year with his latest work, Gullywhump.

Based on a fictional monster from a distant childhood memory, Gullywhump finds Everett continuing to create work set within the eerie, mystical (and highly fictional) world of Bvrntland.

“I have a series of one-act plays mapped out that all take place in the world of Bvrntland, an alternate-reality version of the upper Tobique River Valley and the deep interior of New Brunswick. Gullywhump is definitely part of a larger vision,” said Everett.

“A gullywhump is an indeterminate monster that my father used to tease me with when we went for walks together,” said Everett.  “Looking back as an adult, I realized that I had never even had a tangible vision of what the monster looked like, or what it did. Following Carrion Birds, when it came time to think of the next installment from the world of Bvrntland, Gullywhump is the vision that rushed to the surface – the story of an amorphous monster that stalks a pair of siblings as they revisit memories from their childhood. However, this script more than any other has grown far beyond what I ever thought it would be. It’s a story of trauma and abuse, of rupture and return, of magic and ritual, all framed by and embodied within the gullywhump.”

Everett says the play was created as a direct result of his past experience as a participant in the festival, and credits the development time, criticism, feedback and the deadlines for helping him grow as a playwright.

“One of the most important structural elements of creating, for me, is the pressure of deadlines. Another is criticism and feedback,” he said. “Without NotaBle Acts as an impetus, Gullywhump would still be an amorphous blob in my head. And there are challenges associated with the NB Acts guidelines – limits on the number of characters, simple set design, etc. – which go a long way in giving shape to something that otherwise might remain totally shapeless, so making the submission is a healthy, helpful habit even if the scripts never get selected.”

One of the biggest challenges facing New Brunswick playwrights has always been the ability to place critical and encouraging eyes on their work. This is especially true in Everett’s case. As a self-described singular and solitary artist, he’s always found support within the community that surrounds NotaBle Acts.

“I am very much a voice in the wilderness,” he said. “So to be welcome into a community and institution such as NotaBle Acts; to have other artists, and experts, say explicitly, ‘your work is worthwhile, you are worthwhile, and we believe in your vision.’ It’s indescribable. And for that to happen two years in a row, it’s no great exaggeration to say that NB Acts made my career, even though I’m in the very fledgling stages of it.

“I went from having my first play produced in last year’s festival to receiving a Creation Grant from ArtsNB for a full-length, site-specific script. And now to be back this year, to have Natasha MacLellan read my work as part of the selection committee, and to be able to work with Rob Kempson as a dramaturge. This is so cheesy, but when people ask me how things are going lately, my honest answer is absolutely amazing. Like, genuinely unbelievably well. And that’s not something that I say lightly.”

For Everett, the festival also offers a chance to be inspired by the work of other New Brunswick writers, some at a similar stage in their careers as he is.

“I was very, very excited for Fruit Machine, and I got to see that opening night,” he said. “I saw it as a work in progress last year and the way it has grown and taken shape since then is really moving. The story is important but I think the experience more poignant and that’s what Alex [Rioux] is communicating – the experience of the gay military purge of the 60s, rather than just the story of it.

“Past that, I’m very much looking forward to seeing With Love, Josephine, the other Acting Out one-act. I have so much respect for playwrights who can convey human drama and emotion in a real world, and I’m excited to see what Sophie [Tremblay-Pietre] has done.

“I’m still kicking myself for missing Jean-Michel Cliche’s site specific play S.C.O.P.E. last year,” said Everett. “I heard the latest draft read as part of the festival kickoff party and it’s aesthetically, emotionally, and structurally exactly my kind of play. So this year I’m resolved to not miss out on a first look at something that may be something much bigger again by next year.”

Greg Everett’s play Gullywhump will run August 1-3 at Memorial Hall as part of Acting Out: Two One-Act Plays. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. and tickets are available at the door.