I've always been drawn to the dark and twisted, and when it comes to stepping out of the box, the ideas and possibilities for building a story are endless. I was always tickled by the fact that I could write down any world I could imagine and make it come to life, no matter how absurd. Because if you can tell the story just right, and build quirky characters who fit in to that idea, you can make anything become it's own reality. 

I started out writing this musical mostly just to satisfy my constantly stirring mind. I hadn't planned on doing anything with it, it was just something my wicked brain would type out on the computer every once in a while (Even though I secretly always imagined I would play the evil mistress of macabre who I had created). I'd throw in a melody line here and there and eventually it grew into a decent one act musical. It was still something I had kept quite private until the summer of 2007, when my friend Jenna Goldade and I got to talking about what we would do now that we'd just finished our two year theatre program. The conversation eventually concluded with me telling her about my script. She loved the idea and we started to consider actually trying it out. There was one thing though that we knew we needed to get a hold of before we could take it any further, and that was to get a very talented artistic team behind us. And so, without any hesitation we took our first rough draft of Dead Lover's Day to who we called “the amazing 3”; Dustin Clark, Kalon McClarty, and Stephen Kievit. We sat them down in their apartment, and after shaking off my nerves I sang and read through the entire script. After that day we'd locked down Dustin; an amazing composer to help me write some beautiful accompaniment, Kalon; who's sensationally dark mind would design the set and the costumes, and Stephen to be our stage manager, with Jenna as director. Til this day I know that I couldn't have done it without all four of them. And after the luck of the draw we were given a spot at the Edmonton and Calgary fringes for 2008. 

Jenna was cool with me playing to role of Laverna (hehe, the quirks to being the playwright), and so we just needed to cast the other 7 roles that needed to be filled. After the next few months we held auditions in Red Deer and Edmonton, found a killer cast, and toured to Calgary, Edmonton, and finishing off with a few shows at the Matchbox in Red Deer. I was really happy with how well the show was received, Stephen Hunt from the Calgary Herald deemed Dead Lover's Day one of the Top 20 shows in Calgary in 2008. But I also got a lot of really good constructive criticism from my peers which made me realize that it still needed some work on my part, and that this first run of the show wasn't going to be the last. 

So after we took our bows on the last day of performances, and we hung up our costumes, I went home and did some brainstorming. I took the script and cut it up, expanded it, added songs, rewrote some songs, spilled coffee on it, raised the stakes, and 10 drafts, 6 songs and 2 (almost 3) years later I had a revived, two act musical. And now that Jenna had her own theatre company, I thought, who better to put it up again than her? 

So here we are. 2011 and Dead Lover's Day a musical revived is going to hit the stage with Against the Wall Theatre. I couldn't be more excited and terrified at the same time, but it's going to be an interesting ride. And I'm so happy to have an abundance of supportive people around me while we go through this journey once again. 

Thanks to everyone who believed in this show, and to my dad who had always told me that I would finish it one day.