We’re very happy to have Tilly with us again this year.  When it comes to Fredericton theatre, Tilly has done it all. As an actor, a writer and a director who has appeared in productions by UNB Drama, Theatre St. Thomas, and Bard in the Barracks, Tilly brings a wealth of experience to this year’s festival.

This year Tilly will be directing a reading of Alex Donovan’s new play The Forerunner as well as Mercury, a new play by Clarissa Hurley. She also wrote a play for this year’s Taking It To The Streets series of lunchtime performances.

We caught up with Tilly to learn a bit more about her work with the festival this year.

What can you tell us about your play Everything Bagel?

Everything Bagel is about Chris, a girl who’s recently gone through a bad breakup, and her sister Cecily, an actress who is visiting from New York. They meet up in this bagel shop in Chris’s hometown to catch up after some time apart, and they talk about everything from cardigans to soulmates. The conversation seems light, but they’ve each got their own issues going on under the surface. Even though they’re sisters, they’re very different people, which is always great fodder for comedy, but there are also some really touching moments.

How many plays have you written now for NotaBle Acts?

This is my third play to be produced with NotaBle Acts – my one-act Jolt was one of four staged Acting Out readings in 2015, my 10-minute Here Be Dragons was featured in Taking It To The Streets last year, and of course Everything Bagel is also in Taking It To The Streets this year. I feel very lucky to have this wonderful festival in New Brunswick that creates these amazing opportunities for local artists!

Did you write Everything Bagel specifically for the Taking It To The Streets series or was it an idea you’ve been playing with for a while now?

This idea and these characters have been floating around in my head for a while. The story actually started as a rambling work of fiction in the hazy days of a boring summer job several years ago, and while I quickly abandoned the work, the characters really stuck with me. Two years ago, on the eve of the annual NB Acts playwriting competition deadline, I sat myself down and hammered out a 10-minute play about them and submitted it. The play didn’t get into the festival then, because it was a terrible first draft, but it was more of a challenge to myself to actually hone my ideas and see what I could do with them. After quite a bit of revising and rewriting and reshuffling, I submitted it again this year and here we are!

You’re also directing the one acts, Mercury and The Forerunner. How’s that been going? 

They’re both going really well! The Play Out Loud series is always one of the highlights of the festival for me, as it provides this awesome opportunity for playwrights to hear their work performed, and also to hear feedback from an audience, but without the pressure of having it all finalized and figured out. Often the scripts in this series get reworked and re-submitted after the fact and become something totally different, and it’s really freeing to see the whole process.

How does this compare to other plays you’ve directed for the festival?

I directed Caroline Coon’s one-act It Happened At A Party last year, and before that I’d previously directed a couple of the street theatre pieces in other years. I love working with evolving scripts, and of course this year it’s a little less stressful knowing that they will be readings and not fully produced shows. I’d say the processes are pretty different: in previous years, most of our rehearsals focused on blocking and getting off-book and having sets and costumes and everything; however, with a reading, our rehearsals are mainly about the characters. It’s kind of a stripped down way of working on a show, where you can just really delve into a character without getting wrapped up in the technical details. Since NB Acts is such a playwright-oriented festival, I see the Play Out Loud readings as being mostly for the benefit of the playwright and their continued development of the script. In that sense, then, my job as a director is much more scaled-back; it’s less about having creative control over a production, and more about getting people together and discussing the script in depth so that the playwright can see how it works out loud.

All in all, I’m very excited for this year’s festival, and can’t wait to share what I’ve been working on, and also to see all the other incredible shows!

Taking It To The Streets: Four 10-minute plays |  12 p.m. – 1 p.m. | Outdoors at the Café Beaverbrook atrium July 30^th-Aug 1^st; Outdoors at Picaroons Roundhouse Aug 2^nd-3^rd. Free Admission, with donations accepted.

Play Out Loud: Readings of New Plays in Development | Mercury – 3:30 Sat, Aug 4^th at Renaissance College, Admission by donation

Greg Everett’s play Carrion Birds is one of two plays featured in this season’s Acting Out series. Originally drafted for a script writing class at UNB, Carrion Birds has played a pivotal role in Everett’s development as a writer and a playwright. Over the past few years, the script has been revised and workshopped, dissected and rewritten a number of times before a final draft was completed in time for this year’s festival.

Drawing together elements of regional folklore and Everett’s own experience growing up in rural New Brunswick, Carrion Birds will make its onstage debut with performances August 2-4 at Memorial Hall.

Earlier this week NotaBle Acts’ publicist Matt Carter caught up with Everett to ask a few questions about the play and its development.

Can you tell us a bit about where the idea for your play Carrion Birds came from? 

Honestly, the play is a blend of so many different inspirations it’s hard to peg something down. I guess chronologically the idea comes from my childhood, when a farmer from up the road mangled his arm trying to clear a jammed manure spreader. It’s a story that I’ve always been fascinated by because it has a sort of grim, cynical poetry to it: he lost his arm digging in shit just trying to get the job done. That imagery has bounced around in my head for a long time. But it wasn’t until I became really serious about writing, let’s say the last five years, that Carrion Birds started to take shape. The imagery that I had been holding onto became a part of the supernatural world that I write from, and eventually mixed with local myth and a little bit of nightmare to become the script that’s being produced.

In a conversation I had with Len Falkenstein, he described the play to me as a very “Ryan Griffith” style story in terms of its use of supernatural elements. Has Ryan influenced your writing at all? 

Ryan was actually the dramaturge for the 2016 Script Happens competition in Saint John, for which one of my scripts was selected (Machines of Loving Grace); so he’s directly influenced the mechanics and narrative flow of my writing, as I was privileged to get to work personally with him on the rewrite, and that’s helped me a lot going forward. In a broader sense, Ryan has been breaking trail a long time in the same sort of genres that I like to explore, so seeing his work produced has always been an inspiration to keep striving. I think when it comes to style and vision, Ryan and I inhabit a very similar space because we come from very similar sensibilities and regional backgrounds.

Can you tell us a bit about the development process and how this play moved from draft to final script?

Carrion Birds was first submitted as a draft for a class assignment in Len Falkenstein’s script-writing class at UNB. The draft I submitted to NotaBle Acts was probably the twelfth draft I’d written, and I’ve revised it twice more to get to the final version for the festival. So I’ve received a lot of help and constructive criticism along the way to get it to where it is. Once the crew was arranged and the casting was done, and I had a revised draft after dramaturgy notes, we had a table read and an open discussion about the narrative, the characters, etc., which gave me even more feedback to work with. And then when rehearsals were underway, I was able to sit in and see how things played out on stage as opposed to paper, and get real physical feedback about the dramatic action, the emotion, etc. That’s been a really crucial step. And that’s only the work that I’ve put in; before I even had a first revision finished, the crew was working on putting the tech elements together, set design, prop design. Everybody works on a really tight schedule for the festival, and it’s been amazing to see the effort people are willing to put in to realize a vision.

What excites you the most about being part of this year’s NB Acts festival? 

Really I’m just honored to be selected and humbled at the dedication of everybody involved. I’m proud to have my work featured alongside so many other local writers, and I consider myself lucky to have such a talented cast and crew bringing my script to life.

Greg Everett recently returned to Fredericton after living in his hometown of Plaster Rock and, before that, Saint John. His scripts have been read as part of the 2015 PARC Playwright’s Cabaret, and the 2016 Script Happens contest, but Carrion Birds is the first to be produced. He has also been reviewing theatre for almost five years (including a slew of NotaBle Acts productions); current and past reviews can be found at Stureviews.ca. Questions, comments, and ideas for collaboration may be sent to everett.greg@gmail.com.

About The Play: Carrion Birds

In a dark and bleak forest where the birdsong is a murder of crows’ caw, the last scion of a cursed family ekes out a meager living from an impassive wilderness. But a hard land does not give easily, and life must be repaid with blood.

Playwright: Greg Everett
Director: Robbie Lynn
Featuring: Kyle Bech, Ryan Griffith and Kat Hall.
Dramaturge: Len Falkenstein
Stage Manager: Patrick Lynn
Tech: Devin Rockwell

 See a performance:

Acting Out: Two One Act Plays

Carrion Birds and Casualties | August 2-4 | Memorial Hall, UNB | 7:30 p.m. | Admission $15 Regular, $10 Students/Seniors/Underwaged | View Event