Fishing for laughs
by ELISSA BARNARD, Arts Reporter, HeraldPlaywright’s overheard conversation leads to a Frank series that’s funny
It was one of those happy accidents.
Playwright Daniel Lillford was at home in Bridgetown when he overheard a conversation. "There were two old men sitting on a porch not too far from where I was. I was in the garden working so I kept hearing it. It kept cracking me up and I thought I’ve got to stop working and start eavesdropping."
That was the beginning of Fishing for Frank, a comedy about life, love and trout fishing that opens the Ship’s Company Theatre’s 26th season Friday. The two men Lillford overheard were speaking ill of the dead. "Apart from the fact they were running down somebody in the most delightful way, there was a genteel, laissez-faire way of doing it which I’m not used to. It felt wrong but it was funny."
In the play, Frank is dead and the other characters didn’t like him. They are "looking for a person they knew or thought they knew and did not," says Lillford.
"It’s all about how we perceive other people and how we get things wrong, even with people closest to us. The four characters grew up together and often the husband and wife characters talk at cross purposes when they are not even listening to each other.
"I love to create satire. That’s the wonderful thing about theatre, our foibles are thrown back at us."
Lillford wrote this play for veteran Ship’s actor Michael Chiasson. "I really love him as an actor. He’s one of the most dexterous and mercurial actors."
Joining Chiasson are Lee J. Campbell, who was in Lillford’s play Snow Dance, Deborah Allen and Ship’s Company co-founder Mary Vingoe. "I think we’ve got four of the best Maritime actors."
Originally from Australia, Lillford has lived for eight years on Nova Scotia’s South Shore and for five in the Annapolis Valley, where Fishing for Frank is set.
"When I was in Melbourne I listened to the city. As a writer I listen to what’s going on in my environment. I tend to see the humour and ironies. I just take note.
He is thrilled that Ship’s Company is producing his fourth play. His connection to the Parrsboro company started in 1998 when he was acting in Tiger’s Heart — "pretty much my first acting gig in Nova Scotia" — and then artistic producer Scott Burke said he’d be interested in reading one of his plays.
Burke produced Apple Tree Road in 1999. Pamela Halstead produced The Mystery of Maddy Heisler (2006), which went on to Montreal’s Centaur Theatre, and Snow Dance in 2008. New artistic producer Matthew Tiffin is at the helm for Fishing for Frank.
"I feel very blessed because I love that theatre. Apart from the setting, I love the story behind it — the boat rusting out in Newfoundland and a bunch of hippies getting together.
"It was all about a dream. It was people that had faith and just brought the thing alive."
Today, the old Kipawo ferry boat, which once served as the stage, is part of the outdoor lobby of the new building.
While the theatre company is so important economically to the Parrsboro area, "culturally, I think it’s the best theatre in the province in terms of championing new work," says Lillford. "It’s true blue, to use an Australian expression.
"It’s not just what they do; it’s the people that run it. They luck into people that believe."
Lillford has had a busy year so far with a "really nice role" in six episodes of The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Funtime Hour, the new show starring the famous acting trio from the Trailer Park Boys, and he had a part in the sci-fi series Haven, now shooting in Nova Scotia.
He’s also busy at home where he and his wife Rachel Barton, a freelance business columnist for The Sunday Herald, have three boys, aged eight, five and four.
That makes it hard to find quiet time to sit down and write his plays longhand in a notebook. "It’s great though. It’s just wonderful. They have changed everything in my life so much for the better; they have taught me more than I could have ever imagined. I’m happy to have that interruption."
