At some point, I really intended on updating this thing at the end of every season. It’s only after I’ve looked today that I realize my last update was in the beginning of 2021 (yeesh).

There are two things worth speaking to. I mean, there are a LOT of things worth speaking to, but two really stand out for me as key moments in my personal and professional development as a writer/playwright.

The first is a Canada Council for the Arts grant (I’M GETTING GRANTS NOW). The project, a professional development grant, paired me with a dramaturg, a director, four actors, and a personal practice mentor, to help me build and maintain a sustainable practice in the arts. The project we decided to develop was the play I worked on through the Playwright Theatre Centre’s Block A program, the Scottish Curse.

That was just, amazing. A tremendous learning experience for me in terms of directing, dramaturgy, artistic practice, and most of all, identifying what works or doesn’t for neurodivergent theatre artists. The live stream is pretty chunky, but you can still see it on YouTube.

The second thing is that I received some money to produce some of my anthology of short plays. Each of the plays is 10 minutes and is inspired by my diagnosis of ADHD. I’ll be showcasing the plays during live performances at the Bowen Park Amphitheatre on May 15th and 22nd.

There’s more exciting stuff happening throughout 2021 and into 2022, but I’m pretty focused on the current production schedule.

Love you, and remember to make art.

The winter of 2021 has been incredibly busy and satisfying. I made it to the second round of the NYC Midnight Microfiction challenge with my piece titled Spokes (my second-round piece was a short ditty titled Chubby Bunny which didn’t get me into the final round). That said, I’m proud of the story, and even more proud of my friends Greg Brown and Stacey Matson, who made it to the final round of the contest (winning first and second in their categories). I also wrote a longer piece titled The Baker for the first round of the short fiction contest, and if it doesn’t get top five in its category, I’m pretty sure I can sell it to Netflix.

I had the great honour of going through the PTC Block A program, where I continued working on the Neurodivergence Anthology. I added three more plays, each of which are in various stages of completion. Heh (Hah, Huh?) was shortlisted for the 2021 OR Festival, and Bafomet & Termagant was selected for reading with PGC’s Craft Bites program alongside award-winning playwright Wilma Kenney. I also started writing a new, full-length play titled The Scottish Curse, which has been a tremendous amount of fun to work on. You can learn more about all of my new plays here.

I’ve had the great pleasure of sitting on the board of the Pacific Coast Stage Company (Nanaimo Fringe) alongside some of the most talented and inspiring folks in town. I’m really excited to contribute to this organization, and look forward to what’s coming this year. I also stepped into the role of president for the Nanaimo Craft Beer Society, where I’m largely focused on building community capacity.

The spring brings hope, largely the hope of vaccines and the opportunity to see your faces again, also hope for continued success as a writer and playwright.

There’s this thing in writing where there’s a lot happening and also where there’s nothing happening. You write and write and revise, and a scant few folks know what you’re up to, and fewer still take the time to read what you’ve done and give you a note here or there. I guess my point is that if 2020 has been anything, it’s been about developing a philosophy of process and practice.

On September 26th, I performed a live reading of my new play: Famous Writers (then, subsequently, re-recorded it and added subtitles. You can watch it here).

I continued working on my anthology of ADHD-inspired short plays (there are six in total), with particular progress on four of them. Heh (Hah, Huh?) is a play about object constancy (also, emotional permanence); White Lighters is a play about impulse; Everything is Suffering is a play about attachment; and Chronos & Kairos is a play about time blindness. My goal is to have all six plays (each of which is about 10 minutes) in a performance-ready state by the fall of 2021.

I started writing fiction again, which felt pretty great. Outside of my creative writing class, where I wrote two stories: The Hole in the Chair and Sweater, I also wrote a ghost story called Remember during a workshop called “Fright Write 2020,” (hosted by J.J. Lee) and wrote a piece of microfiction during NYC Midnight’s 2020 Microfiction Challenge.

I’m incredibly excited for the winter, not just because I like winter, but because all these things I’ve been working on will be clicking into place. New board work, new competitions and contests, and more completed works of writing.

Get ready 2021, we’re gonna kick some ass.

Obviously, it’s been a weird summer.

I finished my new play: Famous Writers. It’s my first, full-length play, the first in what will be many more. I also started writing an anthology of six short plays, because if I can’t write better, I’ll just write more (I joke, I know I write good). Anyway, there are plenty of festivals looking for plays about ten minutes long. Each play in the anthology draws from myth and lore and speaks to an aspect of ADHD, with subject matter ranging from time blindness, to object and emotional permanence, to global processing bias, and rejection sensitive dysphoria, basically anything I’m trying to understand about ADHD.

I joined the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, applied for, and was accepted to their PlayConnect program, which supports playwrights in doing readings of their works to the public. I’ll be doing a free, online reading of my new play: Famous Writers on Saturday, September 26th at 7:00 pm.

I also joined the Playwright’s Theatre Centre, applied for (and was accepted to) their Block A program, a program for new and emerging artists.

In other exciting news, Western Edge Theatre is going to the Port this October for a production of “2 across,” a: “production that’s as socially-distanced as it is funny.” Tickets are limited to the first 50 in the 800-seat theatre, and went on sale Friday, September 11th. Western Edge also continued its online showcase with a performance of Bill Miner’s “The Shadow World.“

The Nanaimo Fringe Festival moved its showcase online, with a five-day extravaganza of theatre and performance streamed live via their Facebook page.

Last, and certainly not least, local dramaturg, writer, and director Nicolle Nattrass did a reading from her solo show: Suddenly 50, and Western Edge made selections for their Mid-Island Playwrights Initiative, which include works by Island playwrights Charlie Whelton, Gordon McInnis, Jenna Morgan, and Daniel Puglas, all of whom are great.

I’m not sure what the pandemic means for theatre, except that it’s changing, and there’s good stuff and not-good stuff, the latter seeming to outpace the former these days.

As I mentioned, the good stuff is that I finished the final draft of my new play, Famous Writers, and Western Edge Theatre staged a Zoom performance of Bill Miner’s one-act play, Sandpiper Serenade. I also wrote a bunch of grants, and did an amazing storytelling event with Brianna Wiens of Dark Matter Theatre.

In the most heartbreaky of heartbreaking news, Kismet Theatre Academy closed. Suffice it to say, COVID is wreaking holy hell on the Canadian Arts sector, and can suck it.

I wrote Dispossessed during a community workshop with Frank Moher back in December of 2015. I finished it in early 2016 and submitted it for selection as a staged reading to the 2017 New Waves Festival.

I was accepted to the festival, Dispossessed was performed in front of a small audience with Whitley Dunn as Danni and Frank Moher as Adramelech. Later that year, I submitted Dispossessed again for the 2019 New Waves festival and was selected to premiere alongside two other performances for four nights, February 21 – 24, 2019.