Ron & Darla Matheson and Me

I recently took a couple friends, Ron and Darla, to see the play Kim’s Convenience at Soulpepper Theatre.  They have never seen it before.  I saw the original production back in 2011 at the Toronto Fringe Festival.  I wrote about it HERE.   I remember when I saw it at the Fringe, it was a sold out show and the audience loved it.  Several years after it premiered at the Toronto Fringe, Kim’s Convenience became a successful TV show on the CBC network.

The writer of the play Ins Choi, back in the 2011 Fringe production, played the part of the son who returns back home to the father he left behind after a bitter falling out.  In the 2025 Soulpepper production, Ins is once again in the show but this time he plays the father (that’s his picture on the poster).  When I first saw the play in 2011, I remember feeling emotional at the end when the son returns to his father (the story is a take on the prodigal son).  When I saw the newest version of the play, with Ins now playing the father character, I did not have the same emotional reaction.  And I think that’s attributed to the fact I’m a little older and I identify more with the father.   What struck me in this production was when Mr. Kim (the father) says the line:  “What is my story?  What is the story of me?”

That line stayed with me the rest of the night and throughout the week and became the subject of today’s blog.  What is YOUR story?  For Mr. Kim, his story was his store, it’s what he will eventually leave behind for his kids.  Our lives can get caught up with busyness that we oftentimes don’t stop and reflect in the moment what we are doing.  What is our story?  And we probably don’t want to ask that question because the answers are not always so clear or easy.  That’s okay.

For me, it goes back to family, friends…the people you love…and it goes back to the writing.  Writing has been a central part of my life.  It is in the writing a certain amount of peace is found (and yes, that peace is hard fought because anyone who writes knows it is a struggle).  Inevitable, what I write becomes what my story is.  And you hope to share that with an audience.  Each time I sit down to write something, the question I ask is what is this story about?  And in writing, like in life, that can change, evolve.

If you have a chance to see Kim’s Convenience, it plays at Soulpepper until March 16.  It’s a lovely play full of laughs, a few of tears and leaves you with questions to ask.  In my mind, this is what good art does.

Speaking of plays, I had a reading of my newest play WAVES last month which was  a pleasure to sit through and just listen.  After that reading, I spent time cutting and trimming scenes.  It’s amazing what a great edit can do to a script.  I managed to cut five pages out by snipping dialogue and eliminating anything that was superfluous.  I enjoy this process of editing because it more clearly brings into focus what the play is about.  At the same time, I was able to add pages of humor that augment the themes and struggles of the characters.  At this writing, I’m sending WAVES out to various competitions, fellowships and companies and hope to pursue a production of what I believe is a worthy play.

A couple updates….My screenplay A PROMISE I MADE TO MR. BAGELS was a finalist in the Screenplay Festival, but alas, it was not chosen has one of the winners.

I dug up an old screenplay of mine last month, WHO IS MOLLY STEELE? and decided to do some edits on the script.  MOLLY STEELE is about a woman who doesn’t want to remember who she was and wants to erase her past and redefine herself without coming to grips with what she has left behind.  After I took a scalpel to the script, five pages were cut and I sent it off to the Page International Screenplay Awards and will be sending out to the StoryPros Awards.

In the last couple of months, editing, cutting and reexamining seem to be the theme.  And trying to more clearly define what is the story.  What is your story?  Embrace the question as we all seek answers in this mysterious wonder we call life.