Tilly Jackson is a playwright and director with this year’s NotaBle Acts Theatre Festival.

Tilly’s play Here Be Dragons will be featured as part of this year’s Taking It To The Streets – Four 10-Minute Plays series, and she is directing Caroline Coon’s play, It Happened At A Party which will be featured in this year’s Acting Out series.

Tilly has a long relationship with the festival, having participated in just about every aspect of programming from acting to administrative duties, and we’ve very happy to feature her work this year.

How did you first become involved in theatre?

I vividly remember going to see a high school production of Grease when I was in elementary school in Ontario; that’s where I first remember thinking “I want to be up there.” After moving to Fredericton in middle school, I became friends with the theatre kids and pretty naturally fell into the yearly musical productions, working my way up from ensemble to a lead role in my senior year. Then, in 2011, after my first year of university and really missing the community of my high school theatre family, I spontaneously went to the open auditions for this festival I’d never heard of, and Len [Falkenstein] cast me in the first-ever installment of the Site-Specific plays. Throughout that process, I was inspired to take his UNB theatre class, then I got hired as the Festival Administrator the following summer, and I’ve been involved in basically every capacity of the festival over the last six years!

You’re directing one of this year’s Acting Out productions. Have you done much directing in the past and how have you found the transition going from on-stage to off-stage craft?

This is actually the fourth year I’ve gotten to direct for NotaBle Acts, and overall it’s the sixth play I’ve directed, though they’ve all been of varying lengths. I love directing – the more I work off-stage, the more I realize I love it just as much, if not more, than being onstage. I’m an English Lit. graduate, so I’m all about analyzing text, and as a director you get to do that so intensely. It’s also really creatively satisfying to have so much control over the final product that the audience sees. I’m very grateful to NotaBle Acts for providing an opportunity for people to develop their skills in this way, and for the chance to take on increasingly complex roles; for example, for my first year directing, I was assigned a 10-minute play, and now I’m directing an hour-long one-act.

It Happened at a Party involves some pretty heavy subject matter. How is the show developing and can you speak to the effect it is/may be having on the team involved?

I was very lucky to be able to cast not only very good actors, but actors who are sensitive and mature, so while this is a heavy play, everyone involved has been dealing with the subject matter in an extremely thoughtful way. It’s a powerful script, and an important one, so when we get bogged down with the horrible things that people can do to one another, it helps to think of this play as educating and spreading awareness about toxic relationships and about consent. We also have a very talented playwright who is able to balance funny moments with heart-wrenching ones, so we’re able to laugh a lot in rehearsal as well. It is definitely a challenging and draining rehearsal process, but the cast and crew are more than up for the challenge, and I’m very proud and happy with the results so far.

Can you tell us why you think this festival is so important to theatre in the province?

This festival is absolutely invaluable when it comes to encouraging people to explore all aspects of theatre. I’m actually a playwright in this year’s festival as well, as my 10-minute play Here Be Dragons was selected to be produced in the Street Theatre series. While I’ve always considered myself to be a writer, I don’t think I would have even thought of delving into playwriting if it wasn’t for the opportunity NotaBle Acts presents with its Annual Playwriting competition, and the space it’s created for new and experimental pieces. It’s also phenomenal as a young theatre artist to have paid work, and to be able to try your hand at stage managing, directing, writing, or acting. NotaBle Acts is honestly one of my favourite things about summer in Fredericton, and I hope everyone reading this comes out to experience this incredible festival.

 

Acting Out – Two One Act Plays

Performances: Thursday, August 3-Saturday, August 5, 7:30 PM nightly. Memorial Hall, UNB | Admission: $15 Regular; $10 Students/Seniors/Underwaged

Taking It To The Streets- Four 10-Minute Plays

Performances:
5 PM, Sunday, July 30, outdoors in Officers’ Square, downtown Fredericton (following site-specific performance of The Marcy Case, Fredericton Public Library)
8:30 PM, Monday, July 31, indoors at the Picaroons Roundhouse, 880 Union Street (following Play Out Loud performance of Both Sides)
8:15 PM, Wednesday, August 2, outdoors in Officers’ Square, downtown Fredericton (following site-specific performance of The Marcy Case, Fredericton Public Library)
3:45 PM, Saturday, August 5, indoors in the Chickadee Room, Main Floor, Fredericton Public Library (following site-specific performance of The Marcy Case, Fredericton Public Library)
Admission: free

 

Miguel is directing the Tilly Jackson play Here Be Dragons, as part of this year’s Taking It To The Streets: Four 10-Minute Plays series. 

After a busy start to the summer acting in the role of Richard in Bard in the Barracks’ highly successful production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Miguel Roy is now focusing his attention on the Tilly Jackson play, Here Be Dragons, which he is directing as part of NotaBle Acts Theatre Festival’s Taking It To The Streets series of 10-minute plays.

Miguel got his start performing as a member of a local improv troupe while in high school and has since become an active member of the city’s theatre community.

“I came from a French high school which, at the time, didn’t have much in terms of dramatic arts, so I joined an improv team and got my start acting there,” said Miguel. “It wasn’t until I got to university and performed in Almost, Maine directed by Ilkay Silk that I actually got to try my hand at theatre. Since then I’ve kept challenging myself to try new things from musicals to Shakespeare. I figure if I’m going to get better at what I do, I always have to find new, bigger challenges.”

This season marks Miguel’s first time directing as part of NotaBle Acts Theatre Festival.

“I’ve only directed one show prior to this and it was also a short play as part of a festival held with the Directing Seminar at STU this past year. So this is only my first go at directing outside of a classroom environment. I’ve gotten lucky in that I get to work with Tilly Jackson, the fantastic playwright behind Here Be Dragons, and a fantastic cast of actors, so my first steps haven’t been alone. The biggest challenge, I’ve got to say, is seeing the show and finding what it needs, since now I get to see the whole picture and not just my character’s perspective.”

By the time each production debuts as part of the festival, each will have undergone two weeks of rehearsals with cast, director and creative teams taking notes and receiving feedback from peers and participating artists with each new rehearsal delivering a more polished version of the story.

“The show’s been moving along very well, actually,” said Miguel. “We’ve gotten a lot of the general feeling and ideas down and now it all comes down to memorizing lines and finding new choices in the work. I’m directing a show that has a dragon in it, so it’s a bit difficult working on two weeks of rehearsal time, but I think we’ve made more than enough progress to get this thing in shape with time to spare.”

With the 2017 festival now underway, Miguel sees NotaBle Acts not only as a celebration of New Brunswick theatre, but also as a reflection of what makes Fredericton’s performing arts community uniquely inspiring.

“The importance of this festival can’t be exaggerated. It literally can’t. The works you’re seeing are created by, produced by, and performed by the people we know and love. It’s for people who want to try something for the first time, people who want to try something different than they normally do, people who just want to watch some fantastic theatre made by their community. It’s funny, it’s intriguing, it’s sad, it’s dragons and superheroes and monsters. It’s Fredericton.”