6 minute read
MARYA FOLINSBEE
Marya contemplates motherhood in a scene from Immaculate Laundry, Nanaimo Fringe Festival, 2021. Photo: Forest Ferns Photography
Amplifying theatre from the Kootenay wilderness
by Trisha Elliott
Winlaw-based Marya Folinsbee has been writing, performing and teaching theatre in the Kootenays for the past decade. A creative dynamic duo was formed when she met Martina Avis working with an amateur community production company, the Valley Gems. The pair now run Material Theatre (materialtheatre.ca), an emergent rural theatre company where they create and self-produce both original and existing work. I caught up with Marya for a phone chat to get up to speed on her inspiration and her latest theatrical endeavours.
Q: What was your earliest experience with acting, writing or theatre?
There are so many early theatre memories for me. My earliest most memorable theatre experience was my wonderful grade five teachers having my class study and perform Macbeth. I played Lady Macbeth and I remember being amazed at how easily the language moved through me, even though it was so strange.
Q: Do you feel more comfortable writing, performing or teaching?
I find performing the easiest—the “flowiest.” Often, I don’t even remember what happens onstage, but am also so open, present with myself, with the audience, it’s just so fun. I’m very comfortable there—I’ve never really experienced stage fright. I love what happens in writing, but it’s incredibly agonizing and requires so much more discipline and self-confidence than acting does for me. Teaching and facilitating theatre for community is fun and joyful but also not as natural a state for me as performance.
Q: What do you feel is your greatest achievement in your field?
I’m not sure I think about it that way.... Theatre is so ephemeral, and every project is juicy and rich and is right for its time. This summer will be the fourth season I take a self-written show to a Canadian Fringe Festival, which is a delight—challenging, rigorous, super fun, inspiring wild ride of indie, self-produced works. My first solo show, Domesticated Disputes, also known as Immaculate, is a beloved of mine, that was really rooted in the time of life I was in as a new mom.
The show I co-created with my friend and artistic partner Martina Avis, Be/Longing, was an incredible learning experience: the highs and lows of art making; trusting the process; overcoming self-doubt; finding delight and creative ways to develop ideas. The achievement was actually more in the process, at least for me, though the reception by audiences around the region was super-gratifying and helped me believe I could commit to an artist’s life.
Q: How far are you into the writing of your two current plays, and how would you describe them both?
I am about to go to a weeklong residency to finish The Mosquitos, which is the full-length, kind of absurdist play I’m working on right now. I’m hoping to have it ready to workshop with actors by April. It’s exploring questions like how to get along with others when we don’t even seem to exist in the same version of reality anymore; how to reckon with the desire to escape the world as it is; and what it means to be an artist when you don’t have anything to say. It’s been a doozy of a process to write, especially in the shifting and bizarre news cycle of the twenty-twenties, but I’m really grateful for the long germination process I’ve had with this piece, and excited to see it on its feet soon.
PLAY is a short, playful clown show about performing—what is (and is not) expected of actors when they get onstage. I’m also working on a new show with my partner Aaron Pickett, called Buttons & Pockets It’s a TYA show, which stands for Theatre for Young Audiences, and it’s about the fabric of the universe, how we came to be, and the magical mysteries of space/time.
Q: What was your favourite performance role and why?
I couldn’t choose, they’ve all meant such different and special things to me. Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream helped me rediscover my love of clowning. Constance in Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) was an absolute delight—such wonderful language [the play is by Ann-Marie MacDonald], such fun physical comedy, and such a smart, flawed, hilarious heroine. Evelyn, who is my character in Immaculate, is close to my heart because she is such a projection of my own insecurities, melodramas and divine impulses, especially in early motherhood—she’s just such a deep and true part of me, even though that’s kind of embarrassing to say. She’s both so incredibly uptight and embarrassingly wild. Emma Goldman is an anarchist idol of mine, and so getting to speak her powerful words was rad.
Q: Are there reoccurring themes in plays you have written? If so, which ones and why?
Wildness and civilization. Existential dread. The divinity of ordinary life. Women, motherhood, domestic labour. Instinct and social conditioning.
Q: Who do you look to for inspiration for your work?
I look everywhere. I love the old absurdists of the mid-nineteenth century. I love the contemporary clown community in Canada and around the world, and many of the theorists and teachers who are contributing to that medium. I loved Naomi Klein’s most recent book, Doppleganger, and am finding its themes appearing in my work lately. Patricia Lockwood, Lauren Groff, Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett are favourite authors. Inspiration is everywhere!
Marya will host a Country Road Theatre Performance and Creation Lab at the Vallican Whole Community Centre in Winlaw from September 19-22. The lab will be a four-day, artist-focused series of performances, workshops, masterclasses, discussions and community-networking events. Created for performers, playwrights, directors, presenters, producers and practitioners, this festival will aim to ignite contemporary artistic development, while also fostering local connection and collaboration. More details will be firming up on the Vallican Whole website throughout the spring, vallicanwhole.com.
Marya’s theatrical work has been supported by the Trust, through the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance; Canada Council for the Arts; the Osprey Foundation; BC Arts Council; and ArtStarts.
