This month, local director Britt Small’s WYRD: A Musical UnFairytale is running at Metro Theatre. Small says the themes of the play deal with the trauma of abusive relationships, and how people can move ahead after those relationships.
“That kind of became… relevant as we went on, the idea of, not necessarily the abuse in the relationship, but how people go about healing themselves from that, and trusting themselves again and getting whole so that they can move forward and try to trust again,” says Small. “So, it was very intense at times.”
The writing process of WYRD goes back to a group of women and nonbinary people who went to Whitehorse for a few weeks to develop some material.
“It was kind of like a creative summer camp, in a way,” says Small. “We developed a lot of material, a lot of writing, characters, and at the end of it shared it with some select people from Whitehorse. And then after that I think we had two other sessions like that. Sometimes it was a group of writers and actors, or musicians as well, and we just kept developing material around this idea of, I guess you could say, gaslighting in relationships. But it also became over time sort of a story of healing. It was kind of the experience that I had gone through with this group of women and nonbinary people… The act of creating art with these people was very healing for us.”
Small says that the she was drawn to the play for its feminist themes.
“It’s, you know, scenarios as seen through the lens of female people, and I think stems from a lot of what it’s like to be a gendered person in a world that kind of primacies a more masculine experience, and some of the ways in which women can get caught in a patriarchal system and be disadvantaged by it,” she says. “And then, I’ve also always been very interested in cosmology and mythology and, you know, stories of often what women’s roles are in those kind of cosmologies because often God gets portrayed as kind of a male figure as well. So if you really go back there’s a lot of stories where the origination of the world is very feminine.”
Small says that she loves the community that came along with directing this play.
“I think the thing I enjoyed the most is the camaraderie that was created with the group of people, whether they were the writers in the pieces, or designers, or musicians, or the actors, there was a real bond and understanding and camaraderie, and I think we were able to feel an intense vulnerability and also intense support amongst each other, and that was really healing and it was really fun. I feel like I grew a lot throughout the process and was understood by this group of people as well.”
And although WYRD carries with it some heavy themes, Small wants people to take away something more positive from the play.
“I really want the audience to have a similar feeling and experience that I had, and that we all had, in creating it and working on it, which is a feeling of kind of intense intimacy with themselves,” she says, “and to feel empowered by that, and also feel comforted that there is a lot of knowledge and wisdom that already lives within us, and a lot of times it’s just about uncovering that and trusting that and realizing that we are all connected.”
WYRD: A Musical UnFairytale
Various times,
Thursday, May 18
to Saturday, May 20
Various prices,
Metro Theatre
atomicvaudeville.com