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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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“Someone’s going to blow that place up soon.”

Said to me, in 2004, by a friend I hadn’t seen in ages. It was a few days before I flew to London, England, United Kingdom.  I answered him, “That’s why I have to go see it now.”  I got to see Big Ben, and Southbank, and the Inns of Chancery.  The next year, London was bombed.

As I write this, I am in Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, Turkey.  Forty-five people were killed here two weeks ago, by terrorists who apparently believed the same things as those who attacked New York City, London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels, Baghdad, THREE cities in Saudi Arabia, and as of TODAY, Nice, in the south of France.

I am in Istanbul waiting to catch a plane.  To Nice.

I have been teaching English for the last ten months in Southern China. Almost without exception, all of my students are from very wealthy families (and, obviously, because I’m teaching them, they’re learning a foreign language). Yet almost NONE of them has ever been outside of China, for a vacation, or to hear English. For Chinese citizens, visiting other countries is extremely difficult. My students are in awe when I’ve told them I have visited NINE places: Canada, the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Italy, Iceland, and China.

I’m not going to see Istanbul beyond the airport today, but I WILL. And I am scheduled to be in France for a month. I’m not changing that.

I speak English and Spanish. I’m learning Mandarin. One of my favourite books growing up, Mischief in Fez, was about Morocco. I adapted it into a play because I wanted kids to know more about Islam, because I think Islam, and Muslim people, and the places where they live, are cool.

And YOU will not change that. You don’t get to tell ME or ANYONE else what they are allowed to be.

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Take a Bite for yourself!

I have just had my Critter-nominated play Take a Bite listed on Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Ready to Stage site. $10 and it’s immediately yours. Have a look!

Liana Shannon as Vera, Isaac Andrew as Dion.  Photo by Heather Morrow
Liana Shannon as Vera, Isaac Andrew as Dion. TAKE A BITE, 2011. Directed by Amy DeFelice. Photo by Heather Morrow