From Page to Stage: my vision realized / more to come

The PAGE TO STAGE venue: May 8, 2025

THE SHORT STORY

It wasn’t the stage I had planned. It was not as big an audience as I had imagined. There were conversations I had not expected. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. And, all in all, it was a perfect evening.

THE LONGER STORY

Since early last year, I have been incubating the idea of writers performing their work on stage for a live audience. I didn’t know if my idea had ‘legs’, but I did know, absolutely, that I wanted to try it. Thanks to the encouragement and support of my stalwart writing partner and creative collaborator Deborah Schnitzer, I added the course to our online calendar — and people signed up! It would be a process of real-time discovery and creation; I was as anxious as I was excited.

The initial group of seven writers met in November, coming together out of our shared interest to not only write our individual stories on the theme of ‘transformation’ but to perform them. By mid-January, we had gelled into a group of six, committed to writing an original piece for live performance in early May. Everyone had a story to tell, so we got writing. Inherent to the group’s purpose and process, every (monthly, then bi-weekly) session we read our story aloud as it was taking shape on the page. We poked and prodded each other to dig deeper, go further, to add a bit more detail here, to cut that section halfway through, to expand the opening, to sharpen the ending, and so on. This was a live-action writing course!

Remarkably and wonderfully, my idea — FROM PAGE TO STAGE — was unfolding in real time.

My vision was for the event to be more than a simple reading of words on the page. I wanted live music and stage lighting, printed programs and front of house greeters. Well. That vision remains for the future; on May 8th this year, we delivered a scaled-down version in a private residence. We used an elementary triangle to sound a beat between stories, a music stand to hold our papers, and some simple blocking to get us each on and off the living room ‘stage’. No fancy lighting and just home-printed programs, but we had a technical run-through and then a dress rehearsal. And, we could hardly believe it; it worked! An event it was going to be.

But. Would anyone outside our immediate group be interested? Would anyone come to be the audience we wanted — and needed — to perform our stories for? We would know the answer only if we put out the invitation. Because our chosen venue was a group member's home, we were limited to just 18 guests. Too small to cast our invites wide, but large enough to generate the live audience we were looking for. On the night itself, every seat was filled.

My introductory remarks set the stage, I sounded the triangle, and the performance began. Stories of personal transformation, purpose-written, delivered as gift for our guests to consider their own similar stories: relationship reinventions; identity explorations; self-acceptance awakenings. About forty-five minutes after we began, we closed with a short collective piece of favourite lines from everyone’s individual pieces. THE END. Yet it was the beginning of conversations among everyone present, enjoyed over tea and light refreshments. An unexpected delight of questions and comments and sharing. Such is the power of story — and of live performance. The spark is lit, the energy exchanged, the collective imagination unleashed. Everything I had hoped the event could be, would be, was.

EVERY STORY…

• has a teller
• deserves a listener
• connects one person with another
• is ours to tell in the right venue at the right time
• is worth sharing with the right audience

And most every story takes longer to unfold than we think it will or should. This past June 14th marked the one-year anniversary of the fundraising event I helped put on for The Valiant Theatre here in Winnipeg. Many of you supported it with encouragement and with donations; thank you. Those theatre doors are not yet open, but the work continues to bring the building up to code in order to create an intimate community-level performance space — perfect for writers to share their stories. And I continue to be part of that story. 

One day, I plan to invite you to a performance of FROM PAGE TO STAGE at The Valiant Theatre. Stay tuned.

One guest’s experience of the May 8th event

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.