I have been reflecting a lot lately on the beginnings of words, storytelling and creation in me.

It is not the beginning as far as when I became a storyteller per se, which I believe is an embedded truth in my DNA and life.
It is more how I have developed over the past decade.

Leaving one career.
And exploring another.

In my early twenties, I experienced a truly devastating situation. One that I have been brought back to again and again in my journey of healing. I am reminded of the damage that humanity can inflict on one another when not taking the greatest of care. Myself included.

This was the turning point for me.

I had a choice to make.

Either I let this take me out emotionally, spiritually, physically etc., or I take back my voice.

The Chronicles of the Dramatics Society has many moments where I look back and think of all the things I would change with the experience I have now.

And yet, it still has the heart and the soul of me embedded into it.

Doing this one small show was my first vital lesson that creativity and storytelling are about showing up with a vision, executing it to the best of my ability, and finding joy in the process.

Writing and producing this hour-long play, I found forgiveness for myself and others, space and grace for what is hard to explain and a deep desire to pursue this new side of myself—the side with a voice and a vision.

So albeit I wouldn’t claim this as high art or anything that is incredibly skilled, but that I am proud of it, its raw, vulnerable nature…

and that if I had chosen to stay silent in my pain, I would not be where I am today.

Picture of Joan Francis Goodday Lugar in Canadian Women’s Army Corps uniform.

Finishing up the roughest of the rough draft

on this one woman show on my grandmother has me a bit shaky.

Rough drafts are exactly that. Just a ‘draft’ of what something could be and nothing smooth or connected about it. I sense the holes in the story and the places that need more refining. Yet I can also sense that it’s time to put this in the hands of those I trust most with my unedited words, concepts and a re telling on my grandmother.

Thankfully, I know that there can be joy in the sharing of the roughest of rough drafts. It’s a bit like a conversation. You pass the precious story on to hands and eyes that will tenderly yet firmly sift through the ideas, concept, movements and point out the golden threads and the rough edges that either need to be cut out, sanded or just explained better.

Humility.

This is where I let my ego take a back sit and listen.

The more I have written on my paternal grandmother, the deeper my respect goes for her and the more saddened I am not to have her in this stage of my life. What would I have learned about her now if I had known her as this version of myself? I want to kneel down by her as I used to and lean my head in close in a way that always baffled her and made her chuckle. Pat her hand and feel the well worn skin as she talked about some adventure she had as a younger woman and how ‘devilish’ she was.

She had a way of telling a story that was physical, composed and in real time. As if the memory was so close she could touch it.

It is still early days for this project but as I let go of my first draft and welcome feedback, I recognize that it’s time to loosen up the reigns and do my best to be that younger version of myself who listened to her voice, took in all her facial expressions and asked the leading questions to get the story to unfold deeper.

This Sunday I presented a short piece that I was commissioned to write for a Sunday morning service.

Attending Bedford Baptist Church has been a nice shift for our little family.  To attend a church in our own community is new for us and we love how connected it is making us feel. 

'She Is', in my mind, an attempt to capture the life stages of women and present them with varying degrees of perspective.  It's easy to look at youth, middle aged and senior and leave it at that. But what happens when we truly look at a woman in each stage at all angles?

Depth.

In this little piece I attempted at showing the varying depths of a woman.  I was blessed to have  five women stand as representation while leaving an empty chair representing the indigenous women who have been missing figuratively and literally from our societal conversation. 

Even after presenting this, it is not lost on me that I could only present a limited amount of angles on women and there were and still are so many more I could have touched on.  

This piece has me meditating on that depth that is seen and unseen.  We are programmed to see something in others because we personally decide that is what we are seeing based on our own life experiences.  But there is always more.  More we don't know, can't know and won't know unless we get closer and ask each other, spark conversation and dare to get more intimate with one another.  Relationship with eachother, especially as women is, I believe, the main way we find solidarity and peace within ourselves.

Over the past two months I have been working on two scripts.  

One is a pilot episode and the other is forming into a possible stage piece.  Much of the beginning stages of writing, for me, is sitting with it.  It sounds a bit lazy but in truth,

I need a lot of sitting time.  

I close my door, listen to mood music, create vision boards for the projects and exist with it.  I surround myself with as much inspiration as I can.

This is what I have been doing.

___

This week I attended a screen writing class to prep for an application for a short film.  In truth, I am not sure if I have anything for that particular project, but placing myself in the atmosphere of other creaters is what I need to be doing more.

So I am.

Heres the thing.

I write.

I tell myself this everyday because I forget.

Other people help me forget by not treating me like a writer.  Other times, I help myself forget by not treating myself as a writer.

But I am.  

So that is that.  

I write.

I write here.

I write plays.

I write screenplays.

I write short quotations on Instagram.

I write and I write.

The Mom Show at the Company House in The Atlantic Fringe Festival 2016

So far in my work, the theme of womanhood has been a common thread.  Maybe its because I am a woman, or maybe it's because I am the type of woman who thrives on the magic that happens when women unite forces.  Either way, when it came to continuing 'The Mom Show' I saw women being the centre of it's continued existence. 

Women coming alongside other women, women collaborating with women and women becoming a stronger voice in the places they hold in this world.  

In saying that, I also believe that my own self-doubt, fear and insecurities are the reasons I feel inclined to focus on women and their experiences.  When we unite as women we create spaces for empathy, courage and strength that didn't exist before.  We create them for ourselves and future generations.  It's not about women who work, women who stay at home, women who have kids, women who don't have kids, women who can't have kids.... It's not about any of that.  

It's about ALL of Women.   Her story, is my story.  My story is her story.

I write from my own experiences and I believe that finding ways to collaborate with other women not only brings unity and compassion but a depth in compassion for each other. 

I focus on women because I am one.  I was raised by one, and I am raising one.

So yeah, I may not be Lena Dunham, Sarah Polley or Marie Forleo, but I am Amy Grace and what I have to say and share with the other women sitting in the arena of vulnerability with me, is sacred, raw and some real deep shit.

___

THE MOM SHOW YOGA FLOW
With Katherine King
37 Shaughnessy Place
Bedford NS
Sunday May 28th
3:00 - 4:30

Megan and I met in High School where we bonded over our love for theatre, writing and our little posse of friends.  Megan not only has developed her passion for theatre and writing into her professional adult life, she is a living example of what being a woman dedicated to the love of her craft is.  She is passionate, and stays true to herself and that has been and still is something that moves me.  Make sure to check out CSArt Ottawa and anytime she has work in your area.

How would you describe yourself?

I’m a playwright. I also like to write non-fiction. I’m a theatre director. I also started a small art business called CSArt Ottawa, which I guess makes me an entrepreneur. I’m a creative facilitator who specializes in adapting drama activities to diverse settings and groups.

This is a hard question. There are so many ways I would like to describe myself. I’m a person who, through profession, curiosity, and luck, has ended up in many very interesting rooms with fascinating groups of people. Businesspeople, statespeople, politicians, government workers, artists, activists, academics, people with disabilities, people who work in social services, faith leaders of different religions. Very rich people and very poor people, people with a huge amount of privilege and people who are severly underprivileged. I end up in very interesting conversations, and I switch hats a lot. I like to think of my artistic work as a condensation of these experiences, as a poetry that comes through me from the accumulation of the stories I hear and witness.

But that’s probably not the whole truth. It’s only poetry on the very best rare occasions. I end up writing about myself a lot more than I intend to. In some ways, you are only really writing about yourself.

What role does creativity play in your life?

It’s everything I do that is in any way worthwhile. Loving takes creativity. Getting up in the morning and finding a way to make yourself useful in the world takes a huge amount of creativity.

What are you currently working on?

I am writing a play right now inspired by my experiences working in social housing. It is my MFA thesis, due in 3 weeks(!). I am sure it won’t be truly finished for a while though… the theme is help, and how complicated it is to give and receive help. It takes a long time to think it through… I’m looking forward to taking a break from it because it makes me sad to sit down and write it, every time. Once it’s passed in, I’m going to go back to writing my play about virtual reality and the corporate tech world, because reading and writing about the crazy VR/AR technology and AI stuff going down right now makes me happy.

I’m also working on getting the second season of CSArt Ottawa launched! That’s a completely different creative task, curating and producing other people’s work. I’m enjoying it even more than I thought I would. It’s quite satisfying to find artists I believe in, give them resources for their work, and promote them. There’s very little ego in it for me, just the joy of gathering people and showing work.

And I recently took a day job in pursuit of a ‘parallel career’, a place to use my skills in other worthwhile ways while also taking the financial pressure off of my art work. I think there’s a real stigma around artists having day jobs; that it’s somehow an admission of defeat, or that your work suddenly becomes a hobby rather than a vocation. I think that’s terribly unfair. I have no regrets. I’m working with cool people on a cool project, learning new things, meeting new people. It is having a positive effect on my art work and my life.

What was the last book/movie/podcast etc. that left an impression on you?

I’m over halfway through reading The Idiot by Fyodor Doestoyevski. I had to stop for a while because it was breaking my heart.

It’s amazing that a 46-year-old Russian man from the late-1800s wrote something that a 27-year-old Canadian woman now can feel so connected to. That’s magic. It gives me hope right now when to me the world feels like it’s going to fall apart at any moment. I read the news almost every day, and then I read novels as an antidote to hopelessness.

What advice would you give to other creatively driven people?

Find your people. Collaborators whose work you believe in, and who believe in your work, are incredibly valuable. Honour those relationships.

It doesn’t matter how much money you make from your work, only how much heart you put into it, how hard you work on making it as perfect as possible, how much you try to learn, how honest you are with yourself, and how well this all connects with other people.