From behind the technical equipment at the Gargoyle Theatre, Megan Clarke has closely observed the comings and goings of Winnipeg’s acting community both on and off the stage. These interactions combined with her own romantic “what if’s” have now combined into her debut novel, The Love Monologue, which will be released at the Ellice Avenue theatre this weekend.
The novel, which tells the story of a young playwright who is forced to reunite with the man who ruined her university years (now a Hallmark movie star) on her first mainstage project, is set in Winnipeg’s theatre community, one which Clarke (who moved to the city in 2019) has fallen in love with herself.
“A lot of people who aren’t involved in theatre or who just see it on TV or something like that, they don’t realize how truly connected everyone gets in a situation,” she says of the heightened emotional atmosphere that fuels her story. “Sometimes, literally every single day is [spent] with this small cohort of people to make something happen. There’s something desirable about that and about having this connection with human beings in a format that is playful but also can be very dramatic and can be very scary at times if you want to get really vulnerable about that.”
Channeling stage anxieties
In creating The Love Monologue, Clarke (a pen name for Rebecca Driedger) found her own creative voice outside of her work bringing other creative voices to life. While she did have to confront her own real-life anxieties in the writing process, she intentionally tried to bring those things to the fore.
“I do like to write about characters with mental health struggles just to normalize those things,” she explains. “Cathy [the protagonist] does share my anxiety, but it was through the editing process with the help of having someone else look at the writing and tell me, ‘Maybe this is a different avenue – maybe you need to dive further into this,’… maybe she does need to find some way to let it go.”
“That was a learning that I could probably could have done through therapy, and instead, I did it through editing my book,” she adds with a laugh.
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A love letter to the theatre
While the romance genre does come with certain cliches that Clarke admits are not for everyone, the big thing that she hopes people take away from The Love Monologue is the labour of love that people put into producing independent theatre.
“I’ve learned about myself that I want to do that teaching,” Clarke says about inviting people into the theatre world. “I want people to learn about this stuff and enjoy it.”
“I hope [readers] take away that it’s so much more than just someone going up on stage and doing something,” she continues about her hopes for how The Love Monologue is received. “It is something that people put hours of blood, sweat and tears into, and they love it. And maybe you should support that.”
The Love Monologue will be officially released at the Gargoyle Theatre at 7 p.m. on September 18 with live readings and book signings. More details can be found at the theatre’s website.