Spooky Season Update! (Patreon)

Patrons! Advocates! Benefactors! Supporters! Esteemed Colleagues!

First of all – did any of you take Latin classes in high school? I got a real kick out of it, even though I didn't continue past Grade 10. Of the various things from that course of study that have permanently been burned into my brain (Latin verb conjugations, I'm looking at you), one of them was my Latin teacher theatrically reading from a conversational Latin text, projecting with a booming voice, "SALVE, PATRONUS!"

A tiny glittery piece of that odd, niche memory flits through my brain every time I write "hello, patrons!" as a greeting. I just wanted you all to know.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's get back to business!
I have lots of exciting news to share with you!  

I GOT A SMALL WRITING GRANT!

You read that right! I got a small writing grant! WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I applied way back in June to the Toronto Arts Council's literary program for an 'emerging writer' grant.  I pitched the themes and overarching narrative of my Cirque de Demain story to the TAC, asking for some financial support with my living costs to allow me to focus on writing out 40,000 to 50,000 more words of the work over the course of a couple months!
AND THEY SAID "YES"!

SO EXCITING!

I've never, ever been awarded anything from the Toronto Arts Council – only the Canada Council for the Arts. Ironically, despite it being a municipal-level granting body, they're way tougher on / less impressed by / value circus less than the national-level granting body, so if you're a circus artist it is nearly impossible to get support from them. Guess I figured out a workaround! Ha!

Although – the literary programs of any arts council are fiercely competitive. This is a rare feeling for me but – I feel really proud of myself! Yes!

The Toronto Arts Council makes public the application statistic of any given program. Here's what the numbers were for the one I applied for earlier this summer. Roughly 18% of applications received funding:

Number of Applications received: 304
Total amount requested: $2,480,000

Number of Grants awarded: 57
Total amount awarded: $465,000

I'll share the application that I wrote for this Cirque de Demain story with you all, but there's other written content in the pipeline that I'm planning on sharing with you first! And, the initial timeline I pitched for this TAC grant was to work on the writing from September to December of this year I wrote that application before I found out that "Motherland: Fort Salem" was being renewed for a third and final season, so I have submitted a project extension request to my grant officer to see if I can push the dates to have this project happen more like end of December through to March of next year. I'd like to give it my full attention instead of trying to multi-task being an actor AND delving deep into this writing project at the same time (which is not my usual modus operandi ... "me" even 2 years ago would have tried to do both these things simultaneously and probably even layer on a THIRD thing to do at the same time. This is me attempting to grow and not burn out. Wish me luck lol).

Anyways – before I get to sharing my TAC application with you, here's what else I've been cooking:

• I decided to shoot for the moon and write a big, fat grant to the Canada Council for the Arts to continue my work on Le Numéro Barbette.
  
  Those of you who follow along with my dumb Instagram Story updates likely saw that this was a ~stressful~ deadline that I was sprinting to meet last week. I've written adjacent material about the process of writing and applying for this grant, and will be sharing that work with you over the course of several posts! I think it's a nice salve on the still-tender site of how the first period of "Barbette" research and development concluded in early September, and will give you all the same kind of hope I'm feeling right now.
  
  Plus, I think there's something valuable about sharing what the thinking and development process is for writing a GIANT grant – I know that all of us gathered here under the banner of this Patreon account come from many countries all over the world! Some of us live in places with very robust support for the arts, where there are grants to apply for, and some of us don't. I think there's value in this no matter where you're reading from, because at the end of the day, being able to talk about your work in an intelligent way seems to be half the battle of getting people to take you seriously. At the very least it feels quite validating, so there's also something to be said about sharpening your sword to fight off the dragon of Imposter Syndrome that plagues all of us (most of us? all of us?).
  
• I was asked to perform my VACUUM act at an event in Toronto – the first one of its kind since the start of the pandemic a couple year ago  – this past Saturday.
  
  The province I live in just removed all indoor capacity restrictions for events with vaccinated attendees the day before this show happened. The promoters decided to keep it a capacity-restricted event, and it went off fantastically. I'll be sharing some beautiful new images from the weekend's show, and a little bit of story time to go with it.
  I didn't think I'd be excited, but it was exciting!
  
  My stage time was also 1 in the bloody morning, and apparently it takes me multiple days to recover from getting to bed at 4am now. ***ZZZzzzzzzzz....***
  
• I've been invited to speak on a virtual panel about queer circus arts for the New Zealand "Symposium of Circus Thinking"!
  
  That'll be happening Sunday October 24th. I don't have too much information about it yet regarding where you can tune in, but I'll share that information as I receive it. For now, I know that I'll be a co-panelist with Charles Batson and Jennifer Miller, amongst others (which is pretty cool!)
  
  This will be my first time doing a panel discussion. I'm a little nervous, but I'm going to go forth and attempt to seize the day! For the next two years, I'm going to be actively pursuing more panel discussion opportunities and artist talks (you'll see why when I get into the meat of the Canada Council Application story; the short version is that I've realized that doing that is pretty key to next steps in my career), so this feels like a great opportunity to push a little past my comfort zone. I'll be reviewing my Le Numéro Barbette research notes and creation material in advance of the panel to boil things down to some intelligent-sounding talking points. 

And, finally, the time for me to return to a TV set on the West Coast of Canada is upon us. Motherland: Fort Salem Season 3 "goes to camera", as they say in the business, on November 2nd. I've been told by production that I'm being flown out at the end of October. AND! Apparently I'm ~fancy~ this season and get to be flown out in BUSINESS CLASS. EEEEEEE!!!!! I can pretend to be a corporate fat-cat while confusing the flight attendants as to whether they should be addressing me with "sir" or "miss". I can't wait. (Have I made it? Have I 'arrived'? lol)

There will be some mad scrambling for rushed, pre-flight COVID tests at some point 72 hours before I fly, but other than that I just need to start thinking about what I'm going to pack in my suitcase to go live out of a hotel room in Vancouver for about 7 weeks.

I'm trying to keep my normally over-booked schedule slightly less chaotic in the weeks remaining to me here in Toronto so that I can try to arrive on the West Coast with a full emotional and mental battery. I'll be writing; training straps, contortion and handstands; getting in a few final sessions with my autism counsellor; and doing a few virtual auditions here and there to see if I can rustle up any gigs for later in 2022.

And that's about it!  

(Phew – actually looking at all written out doesn't make things seem particularly un-busy, does it? Oops... well... it'll be okay. Maybe I'll prune a few things from the schedule.)

Looking forward to sharing the process of pulling together my Canada Council for the Arts grant for Le Numéro Barbette with you all over the next few posts.

Until next time, stay strange & wonderful!

XO

Ess