Tricia Collins
Writer | Director | Actor
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A great Gale
The last day or so I have been thinking about a friend and high priestess Lorena Gale. I did not know that today, of all days, is her birthday. I sat at a restaurant on the Drive across from Joe’s Cafe and told a friend about Lorena’s play that opens in that cafe. I was surprised that he didn’t know Lorena because if you ever knew her then you can’t imagine what it would be like to not. On Monday I was packing and her play Je Me Souvien fell out of a box of books. I picked it up and started to read it out loud. I read through the scene at Joe’s Cafe and then towards the middle where she plays out a scene with her mother about Martin Luther King. It was about the messages her mother taught her about how to thrive in a white man’s world. It seems funny for me to read the scene, I suppose, being so fair skinned. But I remembered when Lorena gave me a table read in Montreal of my one-woman play Gravity and voiced my Chinese West Indian foremothers and gave gravity to their story and breathed life into my words and complimented me. When Lorena Gale said I was talented I went from doubting my everything to knowing I have to continue. When she directed my play, that was short and to me a trifling thing, and put such excellence into bringing it to life I thought… it must be worth something. I am so very sad this day and also grateful to think of her. Sad that she deserved to live another 40 years but didn’t get to. Grateful to have known the fire in her, to have seen her truth and to have heard her strong voice and wise words. If people didn’t “get” her, I feel so sorry for them and I feel blessed to know what they missed out on. To a great Gale and beautiful soul.
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Horse boys and Shamans
Hmmm…. blogging about things I see and imagine and hear. My partner and I were recently talking about Shamanism around the globe. I watched a documentary about a boy with autism entitle The Horse Boy, in which his parents took him to Mongolia to visit several Shamans and healers. The process was painful but in the end one great Shaman really connected with the boy. He squiggled his fingers down, hovering above, the boy’s back, dragging away something. Grooming the energy on the boy’s back and removing something while the child simply played and sat on the Shaman’s lap. The next day the boy’s behaviour began to change and continued to improve even as they returned home to the US. The autism, of course, wouldn’t disappear entirely but things were different. He began to have friends and brave certain experiences while controlling his responses.
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BIO
Tricia Collins is a producer, actress and screenwriter. She most recently directed Occupy My Life, a web series about hipster protesters in the Occupy Movement, written by Dan Smiley for New Image Entertainment. REACH, a short film about memory, is Tricia’s directorial debut. She is of Chinese Caribbean and Irish heritage and for 8 years she was a playwright and theatre producer at urban ink productions in Vancouver. In 2008 she wrote and produced the theatre production Gravity, which has toured internationally and garnered high acclaim. Gravity is now entering production as a short film and was short-listed for the Reel Asian International Film Festival’s Pitch Competition. Tricia’s graduate film was a short stylized documentary about her father’s fading memory entitled Memento Vita, which can be found on her personal website. Her magic realist play Dreaming Elevators was produced by La Luna Productions in 2006 and was directed by the late and great Lorena Gale. For Theatre Tricia has directed Bondage by David Henry Hwang, The Farm (an original work) for New Image College, The Youth component of Other Freds by Kendra Fanconi and many others. Tricia’s lead acting roles on stage include Beaver by Claudia Dey, The Unnatural & Accidental Women by Marie Clements, Hunted directed by Maiko Bae Yamamoto, News of The World for Neworld Theatre, Women in Fish by Marie Clements, and Rare Earth Arias by the Downtown Eastside Women’s Writing Group. Tricia’s voice has been featured in numerous radio plays for CBC Radio One including Swimming to China by Adam Pettl and Abigail Kinch, Red Pole Rising produced by Kathleen Flaherty, and Time In Between produced by Heather Brown. On-screen credits include several independent films and various television programs including Luna: Spirit of the Whale, The Guard, Supernatural, Eureka and Reaper. Tricia teaches acting at New Image College of Fine Arts and holds a Master of Arts in Media from Ryerson University. Ms. Collins has been a theatre and multi-disciplinary artist in Vancouver since graduating with a BFA in theatre from Simon Fraser University. She is co-owner of Ring Out Media with Sound Designer Troy Slocum.
Follow her on twitter: @TriciaCollins
