Thought Residencies

Hi this is Maev Beaty and this is my first thought. Today is the First Day of School. It's the first day of grade one for my daughter and her friends. Today is the first day of my voice agent, Sandi Sloan's, Retirement. Today is the day that a friend of mine's daughter will not go to school, because she passed away a week ago. Today is just any other day.

So a guy on the highway got really angry with me because I couldn't, wouldn't, let him into the lane if his choosing at the time of his choosing and so he angrily swerved around me and got in front of me and then slammed on his brakes forcing me to slam on my brakes, very dangerously, all to teach me some sort of lesson and then a full five minutes later when he was exiting the freeway he rolled d...

Today I am thinking about Larry Dohey. I woke up this morning and checked Facebook as I am wont to do, and saw that Larry passed away suddenly yesterday. Larry was an archivist, but a bit of a celebrity at least within in our community, the creative community in Newfoundland and Labrador. He worked at the archives of the Basilica, the Roman Catholic Diocese for many years, and then at the Rooms pr...

Today I am in Avondale Newfoundland, in a beautiful little house overlooking the bay, working with Evalyn and Leah on The Dialysis Project in the capacity of a dramaturge, key collaborator. And so I'm thinking about coming to other people's work, other people's stories, and how to bring what I do to those stories in an attempt to elevate them without intruding upon them, and how to honour trauma a...

I'm just about to hop in a car and drive three hours from St John's to the Bonavista peninsula to take in the second instalment of the Bonavista Biennale, a project that started back in 2017 and it's having its second iteration this year. An incredible, ambitious, beautiful art site-seeing tour across the Bonavista peninsula, where you dip into these little buildings, and some not so little, along...

It's my birthday today and so I'm thinking a lot about aging. I'm thinking a lot about aging this entire summer actually. We just moved my parents into a brand new accessible house that my brothers built for them, with a little assistance from me. And it's just got me thinking about my fate as I age, as a queer man with no kids, as an artist with, you know...skeptical about my financial future, to...

Had a great meeting with Brian and Sarah today about my new show and our upcoming workshop, which got me thinking about how lucky I am to have amazing collaborators in my life, which got me thinking about the whole reason I got into theatre in the first place. It was, what I called once, like organized sports for the geeky kid. I didn't play organized sports when I was a kid; three failed years of...

I'm walking around the lake and there's a guy riding his bike on the walking trail and following him is his dog off leash and suddenly I'm filled with such, like, intense annoyance. And in that moment, I realize that I'm inherently in my life a really strict follower of rules. And then I start to wonder about how much of that naturally, innately, presents itself in my work, and if there's any way...

Today Greta Thunberg departs on a two-week journey across the Atlantic in a zero emissions yacht to attend a climate conference. Today I head to my office to work on more details of sending 10-12 people on a six-month tour across Canada via car, plane, bus. Something's gotta give

So I was sitting in the park yesterday and watching some skateboarders and kind of marvelling at the inherent engagement with failure that comes with skateboarding. It's really admirable. They – usually a bunch of guys – they usually get together, and fail, try things that they know are beyond their capacity but they know they'll only get to if they repeat repeat repeat. And unlike most endeavours...

My name is Robert Chafe, and this is my thought residency, day 2. So, I composed a rather eloquent thing detailing a conversation I had with a friend of mine about the very fuzzy line between confidence and arrogance and how I sometimes trip on that line and don't quite know how to proceed. And just as I was about to send it in, I was looking at Facebook and a friend of mine's status update simply...

So as with all things with regards to my career, I'm going back to basic principles with this thought residency and rooting it in honesty. And my first thought rooted in honesty is that this thought residency is stressing me out. Because I feel the weight and need to be poignant and smart. And I don't operate well under pressure to be anything. So that's my thought today. It's going to be an inter...

Alright so I don't know if anybody else does this, but when I travel I really like to visit destinations that were in movies or in my favourite books. Um, for instance, I'm going to Austria in a couple of months and basically everything on my list is just something from 'The Sound of Music'. That's all I'm doing, that's the only place I'm going. It's gonna be so good.

Do you ever take your dog to the vet because he's injured? But you're scared because you think the vet is going to think that you like hurt him on purpose because you have Munschausen by Proxy? Which is a disease I learned about on the TV show 'House'? I often fear this. I don't know why. Except my dog gets injured a lot and I'm just really worried they're going to think it's me.

I just saw 25 Fringe shows at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in the span of 5 days. That averages to 5 per day and as someone who loves theatre, that is too much theatre per day. That's at least 5 hours per day. I don't like anything that much. I saw a show once that was like 3 ½ hours. Like The Ferryman, or Jerusalem, or John. That's fine. 3 ½? Doable. 5? No. I'm out.

Okay now maybe I'm just on a roll for crankiness but I also think we were all very very mean to Game of Thrones. It wasn't terrible. It was just like when you like try to make a food but you don't quite have all the ingredients on hand so you try to just hope that like you don't need the eggs for your cake? You probably do… but you made the cake. You got there. Sometimes getting to the end is succ...

Alright so here's the thing: you've probably seen the CATS trailer by now. I've seen the CATS trailer by now. I've seen CATS. I like cats. I'm allergic to cats. But everyone is kind of making a big deal about it. We haven't even seen it yet. It's not as terrifying as Sonic the Hedgehog. I wish we would all just listen before judging. Let's see it before we make fun of it. People work hard to bring...

Hi, this is thought residency. I am thinking about… large icons on computer desktop screens. When is the appropriate age to switch from large, sorry, small icons to large icons? I don't know. But I may have just done it on a Thinkpad by IBM. So I may officially be old. Mic drop.

I don't know which one of you… one of you, as if there's just two of you listening… there might be. There could be zero, there could be a thousand, it's hard to say. I don't know which one of you has ever done stand-up comedy before but this is just a fool-proof way to achieve success in the industry is start all your sets with "what's the deal with" and then fill in the blank and then end it all...

Hi. Is it just me or has the price of real estate really skyrocketed these days? I've been looking at property located just off Mulholland Drive, next door to director and writer and occasional musician David Lynch, and those properties go for at least 3 million. If not more. And as a writer I find that unreasonable. So… clearly I have to get married.

Alright, so: has anyone been to a Chiropractor before? I just went to one, because my massage therapist noticed I had some weird rotation in my pelvis. Now the Chiropractor tells me that my entire spine is basically collapsing. It's very tragic and sad, but also global warming is coming for us all, so I'm not sure it totally matters. But I didn't tell him that, and just gave him my money instead.

Plants. Plants are cool. Um, and it's not cool to say 'cool' anymore. You have to say 'lit' or 'dope'. Plants are lit and dope, but they're also cool. Plants don't care if they're lit or dope, and that's what makes them even more lit and more dope. Dope-er, if you will. I'm looking at a plant right now. It's a tree, it's in a pot, the pot is, like, a pale pink? I am going to name this tree, and I...

Coffee. Here's my hot take on coffee: coffee should be black. It should be hot. It should not have any sugar or cream in it. It should just be delicious, hot coffee. I drink it like my favourite director and future best friend drinks it, um, David Lynch. He should call me because he's getting kind of old and we're still not friends, so… if anybody out there can make that happen, that would be grea...

Hi, this is Frances and I am here with your 1 st July Thought Residency and I thought I'd start off with my favourite subject: me! Just kidding. My favourite subject is Keanu Reeves. Um, I've seen all of Keanu Reeves' films at least twice and I will fight anyone who says he is a terrible actor. I think he is a rock, he is an anchor, he is majestic, he is style, he is grace, he is Miss United State...

I am thinking about how my life is extremely full, ahh, of really great things but I actually don't have thirty seconds (laughing) to, ahh, process and record and think about my thoughts sometimes and I am almost a full twenty four hours late with my thoughts. And that's what I am thinking about.