I started writing as kid. I wrote a one person show when I was 12 that was a person on stage and a voice from beyond and I recorded the voice (with pauses for the on stage lines) and performed it for my mother in the living room. She was impressed (and it was a challenge to impress her). I continued writing plays in university for classes but it wasn't until I scored a spot in the Domino Theatre 2006/07 one act play festival that anything I wrote was performed on stage. That year was an experimental text/dance piece written with Becky Bridger. The following year I wrote two things for the festival, The List (a series of verbatim monologue collected with Sara Beck, Amy Symington and Jennifer Kenneally) and a one woman show called The Frank Diary of Anne.
That show ended up playing in London, Ontario and San Francisco, California and was the turning point for me in deciding I wanted to write full time and give up acting.
Here's a picture of me as Anne in San Francisco.
ANNE:
I’m at this party, one of my friends, having this great conversation, when out of nowhere, this girl, she was just sitting there real quiet the whole time, she absently says, kind of quietly—I only really heard her ‘cause I was sitting next to her, she says “I don’t want to be here” and she just stands up and walks into the kitchen. I’m like, whatever, and we continue talking. A few seconds later out of the corner of my eye I see her come out of the kitchen and go into the bathroom. And then I didn’t see her for awhile.
The conversation sort of digresses into a discussion about tv so I wander into the kitchen to get another drink. I walk in and all the drawers are open, which is a little strange. Not like poltergeisey strange, just not normal you know. And they have one of those wood blocks with the knives of various sizes in them and I notice that the middle knife is missing. So naturally I’m thinking... maybe something’s up with quiet girl. I knock on the bathroom door. No response. And just like in the movies I gently push and the door creaks open...
So here’s the thing about that knife. We used that knife to cut cheesecake with. It was the “cheesecake knife”. That was its purpose. It was thin enough and wasn’t serrated. When you use a thick knife a lot of each slice of cheesecake ends up on the knife and then you have to smush it off the knife and then it just doesn’t look good on the plate. And if you use a serrated knife you waste a lot of the cheesecake too—you can’t even lick it off or you’ll cut your tongue.
Anyways, so I push open the door and I totally expect to see her—God I don’t even remember her name—completely expect to see her sitting on the floor with both arms hanging into the bathtub with her wrists slit and the knife covered in blood.
Makes you realize how insignificant life is. Ending your life with a cheesecake knife. What I don’t get is, if you are going to be considerate enough to bleed into the bathtub and not all over the floor, why not go all the way and be considerate enough to not kill yourself in someone else’s bathroom?
But she wasn’t. She was on the toilet, and since I’d sort of expected to find her dead in the bathtub it took me a minute to collect myself and like, close the door. The rest of the night was pretty awkward.
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