InterMission Residency

Today concludes the two-week process for my first original piece Fruit Machine.

This show has been like a timeline of my progress as an artist. I call it my diary show. I started Fruit Machine in 2017 after Lisa Anne Ross of Solo Chicken, one of my long-time mentors, invited me and Samuel Crowell to lead our own Coop Corps Project. The Coop Corps was a special training program to create a small movement company of emerging artists, she had a lot on the go at the time and wanted a Coop student to take the reigns and create their own show.

Several small work-in-progress showings and a Canada Council grant later and here we are at the Fredericton Playhouse! I am so blessed to get to continue this show, now with a fiercely talented queer ensemble and creative team. Throughout its entire life cycle, the show has had fantastic artists attached but this residency really felt like a level-up in so many ways.

Like any process thought it came with its fair share or challenges. I’m still an emerging director, and when new and unexpected events take place it can still feel earth-shattering trying to deal with them. Working on this show at this level made me feel incredibly small a half dozen times. It was a struggle to get past the voices in my head that said: “I’m stupid, that I shouldn’t be the one handling this material, everyone thinks I’m incompetent, do I even know how to make theatre?”

It can all feel like so much, but I am beyond proud of the work that was made and so grateful to have a team that was always there to support me and this story.

Fruit Machine will be touring New Brunswick the summer of 2023, more details to come!

Xoxo