Tag: APN

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One Week to Writing Madness!

Our Write-a-thon will be in exactly two weeks! Here are some ground rules for the event:

-I will write a new, full-length play, in 24 hours. The live stream will begin at 6 pm on Friday, March 24, 2023, and will end at 6 pm on Saturday, March 25, 2023. The live stream will be embedded in takeabite.ca , and donations must come via that website.

-Viewers will see a split-screen: on one side, me getting more tired and frantic: on the other side, the play as it’s being written!

-Here is the play’s basic plot:

“3 very different people meet online at the start of the pandemic. They connect, but as the pandemic wears on, their individual lives change, which alters their relationship.”

-At 6 pm on March 24, YOU will give me names for the 3 characters! The first 3 donors will get to provide one name each. Submissions will be via the website.

-Every 60 minutes, I will check prompts and donor amounts. Whoever has donated the most in that 60-minute period will get their prompt used next! I must use the prompt, and I must make it make sense.

-At the end of the 24 hours, whoever has donated the highest amount will pick the name for the villain of Reasons I Hate Being Single !

I will have until March 31, 2023 to fix typos, and then the resulting play will be entered into the Alberta Playwriting Competition.

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Write-a-thon, March 24th!

Click below to see how you can watch what a writer in action, and support Take a Bite’s next film, from anywhere in the world.

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Thank you to the audience!

THANK YOU to everyone who attended the reading of Alex and Michael and Hannah last night. A play isn’t a play without an audience, it’s truly impossible to know if a play works until you can hear the reaction to it, so you will be a huge help in improving the script, and getting it onstage!

Thank you to Script Salon, Holy Trinity, Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Alberta Playwrights Network for putting on the reading.

AND to the amazing director and cast for making the reading happen…ESPECIALLY Jake Tkaczyk for stepping in 30 minutes before rehearsal began yesterday!

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small update to AMH

We had to make a casting change, but the reading is still a go! Our Alex will now be Andres Moreno! See you, in person, or online, on October 17.

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Listen on Facebook Live!

Here’s to confirm that the reading of Alex and Michael and Hannah will be live-streamed, here, at 7:30 pm Mountain Time on October 17, 2021. Tune in and behold!

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Today is a good day in Endometriosis Awareness Month

The last three weeks…not so much. I’ve cancelled going to shows, going to a board meeting (some secretary I’ve been), and had to force myself to go to work, because I need to pay rent.  Spending sleepless nights lying perfectly still, yet feeling my abdomen being wrung like a soaked towel. My gynecologist assured me that my endometriosis was under control.  Which made the pain I was having more unbearable.  I had known what was causing the pain, and now I didn’t anymore. What he said then was that many women who have endometriosis also develop Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  The constant pushing and pulling by the endo lesions in the lower body wreak havoc on the lower intestine, which reacts with…irritation.  So, I was referred to a gastroenterologist. That was in November.  I called my gynecologist’s office in February to ask if my referral had gone through – it had.  So then I called the gastroenterologist – they’re behind, but I was promised they’d call me to schedule an appointment in a couple of weeks.  It’s now 23 March. I will rant elsewhere about Canada and Alberta’s public health care systems being gutted by our increasingly conservative governments. What I’m concerned about today is that, six years after being diagnosed with endo, thirteen years after realizing something was wrong with me, it’s not over. I haven’t tried cutting down on any specific foods yet, because – unlike what advertisers would have us believe – each person can have different triggers.  That’s if IBS is what I have; I don’t even know yet.  I thought last week, perhaps, raw spinach was a culprit.  But I had some this past weekend, and I was fine.  It’s not likely gluten, because I haven’t made any particular effort to cut out bread, pasta, or soup using gluten as thickener.  And some days I’m good. Others, NOT. This Saturday, 28 March, is the EndoMarch at the Alberta Legislature, when all we “Endo Warriors” band together and tell the world that there is an insidious illness in 1 out of 8 women on earth, which has zero outward symptoms, but causes infertility, consistent muscle spasms and aches, depression, and OTHER illnesses, like IBS.  And no one knows where it comes from, or how to stop it. Today, this second, I feel normal.  Tomorrow?  In twenty minutes?  In five?  … I don’t know.

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I’m writing a play in 18 hours or less!

I can’t do it in 24 hours, because I work until 5 pm.

Yes, the 2nd Annual Writeathon begins at noon tomorrow!  Last year’s was…bonkers.  Fellow writers made velcro out of their beards and resorted to lacing of warm drinks (and then just tossing the mix altogether and drinking straight out of the mickey).  Oh, and we all did some writing and raised some (a crapload) of money to keep Alberta Playwrights Network ticking.

I haven’t been flogging the Writeathon at all.  With this two months ago, and flareups of this, I’ve been lying low. Now, however, I’m going to write out the beast that is endometriosis and kick it across the room.  I am re-writing It Started With an Allergy from beginning to end, and one way or another, I’m performing it (me!) at next summer’s Edmonton Fringe.  If you’d like to see it, feel free to visit HERE.

I’ll see you when I come down from the caffeine high.

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the Ugly Princess cometh!

I actually have PLAY NEWS.

The play I wrote at APN’s Writeathon, which I’ve been babbling about since last September, will get its first, full, public reading!

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s The Ugly Princess!!

It’ll be at Script Salon, put on by APN and PGC:

Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 10037 84 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB
Google Map
7:30 pm on Sunday, 3 August.

AND HERE’S THE CAST

I’m a wee bit excited.

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Have you ever been so depressed you forgot to be happy?

Since I’ve blogged about my endometriosis, and I had a minor revelation this weekend, it may be time to talk about my clinical depression. Yes, I’m a bag of laughs.

Once again, I have no idea how long I’d officially been depressed. I was diagnosed by my GP in 2001, and took citalopram and went to counselling for about eighteen months. This past fall, I noticed the symptoms creeping back – I was irritable all the time, headaches, insomnia…sudden crying. Now I’m taking escitalopram.

It helps. Most days, I feel normal – for a given value of “normal”, being a playwright and so on. I’ve previously had acquaintances question whether I should be taking meds. Given the choice between wishing this, or endo, on my worst enemy, I’d choose neither.

I take the escitalopram once a day, and like most medication, the idea is to take it at the same time every day, so the body has a consistent supply. Shortly after I started this one, I set myself a reminder on my phone to take it after dinner – I was forgetting in the mornings, and would sometimes miss it in the evenings if I was going out. And on the odd bad day, if I missed taking it, I felt as rotten as when I wasn’t taking it at all.

This past Friday, our executive director of APN, Trevor, was in Edmonton. I got home from work, had a quick dinner, and went to the meet-up. We talked shop from 7 till 10. Before driving home, I checked my phone, and realized I had missed taking my meds. It was fairly late, I felt fine, so I figured this one day would be okay. I got home and went to bed.

Then yesterday, Saturday, I got up, and went straight to writing. I’ve had an idea for a screenplay (uh huh) percolating, and this year’s deadline for Praxis’ Screenwriting Lab is 30 June. I wrote 35 pages yesterday. I was so excited about what I’d written, I was buzzing. I went out to get a taco salad for dinner, and when I got in and looked at my clock…I was late in taking my meds again! Two days in a row wouldn’t be good, so I took it right then.

I have never missed taking my meds two days in a row. I was perplexed by that. And it still wasn’t until I’d had a mini-facial with my volcanic face-mud from Iceland, and falling asleep with my cat under my arm, that it dawned on me: I had forgotten about taking my meds because I didn’t just feel fine. I felt happy.

I don’t like having to remember what happy feels like.

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come say hi and have GELATO!

Okay, I’M having gelato. You can have whatever you want.

The intrepid executive director of Alberta Playwrights Network is going to be in Edmonton for Wordshed this weekend, and Friday night, June 20, a bunch of we playwrights are getting together at Block 1912 on Whyte Ave. I’ll be there, and if you’re cool, so will you.