This year’s festival features a unique creative pairing. Megan Murphy and Leanna Williams met at the National Theatre School in Montreal where they co-wrote Perky, one of three Mainstage productions being performed at this year’s festival. After a successful run at the Ottawa Fringe Festival earlier this summer, we’re very pleased to be presenting this new play for our audience. 

In advance of Perky’s three show run at the Open Space Theatre, we spoke with co-writer and performer Leanna Williams to learn more about the show, its origins, and what challenges (if any) can come from writing and performing your own work.  

Can you explain when the idea for this play first came up and what brought you together to write it?

We met at the National Theatre School in Montreal, where we were both in the same acting cohort (class of ’23!). The idea for Perky started around a kitchen table, on a ramen-filled Friday night, after discovering how badly we both wanted to write. 

We began to compile a list of images. It just poured out of us, like we’d taken the lid off of some Pre-Teen Pandora’s Box. Somewhere, in a shared notes app, there is a very long, absurd (kinda sexual— mostly food-related) list of things: memories, visceral sensations, anything that filled us with that feeling. That awkward, sticky, nostalgic feeling of when your body starts to change but your brain is still catching up. (Think: Dunkaroos, period cramps, Velma in that latex… etc.)

Perky materialized from those feelings. I think that’s what makes the play so relatable.

Our description mentions Doctor Who and Darko. Would you say this is a comedy/sci-fi about someone’s first orgasm, or is that too on the nose? 

Perky is the story of a 19-year-old girl on the hunt for her first orgasm. Unsuccessfully. That is, until her inner world takes human form in the shape of The Fantasy Lesbian. Through a series of fantasies (and nightmares), Perky and Fantasy work together to solve the problem and figure out where things went wrong.

Perky is the epic battle of Woman vs. Self, in the form of a one-act comedy. It’s a story of shame and pleasure, and how they co-exist. It’s a story of radical queer joy, against all odds.

We took inspiration from films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, where genre-bending and world-building were taken to the extreme. In our play, Fantasy takes on the shape of our favourite nerdy-sci-fi characters, like The Doctor and Draco Malfoy — characters who, undeniably, might just be fan (fiction) favourites.

What are some of the challenges that come from writing and acting in your own play and working with a director. Is it weird to have someone else shaping something you know so well, or is that all part of the fun in creating theatre?

It was definitely a challenge. We’re wearing several hats at once (producing, writing, designing, and acting in the same play is a GREAT challenge). I think the fact that we had such an incredible partnership between the two of us — a way of communicating and sharing responsibility — is the reason we made it here.

From the beginning, we knew that Perky had to be collaborative. We had to build a room of queer, femme artists. The play would not be what it is today without our dream team: Allison Moira Kelly, Isabella Robert, and, of course, Madeleine Scovil.

Madeleine was in our class at NTS, and also happens to be one of our best friends. Of course, transitioning to this new way of interacting with each other was a challenge, but it was made possible by the respect and trust we’d been building for three years. 

Ultimately, we learned not to be precious; to trust that nothing feels better than another artist caring for your work, and surprising you.

Both intentionally cringey and heartfelt, PERKY is a fun, offbeat way to spend an evening that will have you reminiscing about the good old days of adolescence. For better or worse. – apt613.ca (Ottawa)

Perky runs August 5-6 at the Open Space Theatre, August 5 at 2 p.m., and August 6 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 General and $10 Students (w ID) at the door.

After making both her playwriting debut and her festival debut last year, Fredericton playwright Gill Salmon shares her latest play Lakeview Hotel as part of our 2023 Acting Out series. 

Gill Salmon is a trained improv performer, a stand-up comedian, and an emerging playwright and screenwriter who recently made her acting debut in Strike Pictures’ upcoming feature film. She also collects prosthetic limbs and has a 12-foot skeleton statue in her backyard that doubles as a Christmas tree during the holiday season. For these reasons and a wealth of others, we are overjoyed to have Gill involved in her second straight season with NotaBle Acts.  

Last year, Gill made her festival debut with a pair of short sketches as part of our Taking It To The Streets series.  And this year, her latest play Lakeview Hotel will be featured as part of our Acting Out series of one-act plays. 

Lakeview Hotel is a ghost story told from a ghost’s perspective, sort of.

“The idea for this play came to me as I was reading a book about writing last August and the book was discussing different perspectives in an environment,” she said. “I’d also been reading a lot of Stephen King and was thinking about where The Shining maybe came from. 

“Hotels are also kind of a weird single serving experience for humans. You’re there for a night or two, you move on. But there are people who work there behind the scenes that you never really see, but their absence would be notable. What if the hotel is known for being haunted, like the Algonquin in St. Andrews? What if people go there for that experience and the hotel management lean into that and somehow convince a few bored ghosts, who are just there passing the time, to do something meaningful while they’re waiting for their unfinished business to be addressed? I liked the idea, drew up an outline, and Lakeview Hotel was born.”

Moving from last year’s site-specific outdoor sketches to our festival stage at Memorial Hall is a big jump for any emerging playwright. Gill is one of just a few in our festival’s history to follow-up both their playwriting debut and their festival debut with a one-act production across back-to-back festivals. 

She credits the variety of local opportunities for inspiring her writing and giving her many of the tools to stay focused on her craft while growing artistically. 

“Fredericton is so rich in resources,” she said. 

Since last year’s festival, Gill has attended workshops at Theatre New Brunswick with Jena McLean and others; took part in NotaBle Acts’ writing workshops with Anthony Bryan; and attended Ryan Griffith’s winter workshop series at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre. She also helped establish the local improv group Dead Serious (whose core members are all featured playwrights in this year’s festival!), and completed the Foundations in Visual Arts program at NBCCD. 

Across all her creative experiences this past year, Gill says the most important thing she learned was to ask questions and step outside her comfort zone.

“The biggest theme for me throughout this past year was getting to the point that I felt comfortable asking these magnificent and brilliant artists for feedback on my work,” she said. “Work with a lot of people, get a lot of different experiences, ask for feedback, do the revisions, build something cool.”

Lakeview Hotel and Night Train by Merrit Johnson will be performed at UNB’s Memorial Hall, August 3-5 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets available at the door for 15$ regular, 10$ senior/student/underwaged.

Photo by Kelly Baker.