Another old script undergoing resurrection. This one was yet another piece I jammed with in University with Djanet Sears teaching. Basically, it was me observing basically everyone in school planning to go backpacking with very little knowledge of the culture they're going to experience. I had a thought - what if they got lost? What if I wrote a survival play? And what if I made it really weird and surreal. I didn't want to focus on a specific culture or nation. I wanted to make up the country. I wanted to play with the reality of it too. 

​

So first draft. We read it in class. Got some laughs. Got some scratching of heads. It was time to do a little public reading of it to see if it actually had legs. We only did one. It was at the usual spot, the Victory Cafe near Bloor and Bathurst. It focused on three backpackers who loses one of their gang, and go on a harrowing journey of self-reflection and physical danger to get her back. It was going to have puppets and all that. I still wanna do it like that one day. 

Three backpackers enter the Khromhayana Forest in a fictional tropical country called Seripaterre. Perrie Voss played Lea, the cynical tag-along who becomes the reluctant heroic centre of the journey. Her friend Serafima, played by Liz Der (The Maidenwar), is of Seripateri background although Canadian born. The third person is a naive but loving hippie named Siobhan, played by Katie Komarnicki, a mutual friend of the two who instantly grates on Lea. After Serafima suddenly disappears, Lea and Siobhan work together to try and find their lost friend, enduring dangers, strange creatures, and even attacked by gorilla warfare soldiers. You read that right. The ensemble featured Gill Buckle, Dorcas Chiu, and Sarah McGaughey.

​

The piece was absurd and funny, but also was trying to get into Lea's internal struggle. The original draft had her dealing with her spiritual life - as it is lifted from a biblical 'testing of faith' story. Not a religious piece, nor am I religious writer. But I really enjoyed the metaphor-as-story-drive thing. 

​

So after I did Fireproof in Fort Frances and Toronto, I realized that I was telling two different stories. One, a comedy about volunteer firefighters, and another about grief and survivor guilt. I felt that the latter belonged in another play. Maybe this is where Lea's story can come in. 

​

I thought about the Kubler-Ross model of grief and how each step can represent a different scene or level in the forest. The character Emily never disappeared when she left Fireproof; she just jumped ship to another story. 

​

A Great and Terrible Wilderness will return in 2027.