Firelight Theatre Workshop telling “Tiny Stories’

By JESSECA TIMMONS

Monadnock Ledger Transcript 

Published: 06-26-2024 12:04 PM

The Firelight Theater Workshop’s fifth “Tiny Stories" event will be at 6 p.m. on June 30 the Harrisville General Store. The theme of this year’s performance is “Tiny Stories from Tiny Stores.”  

“It’s tiny stories about tiny stores, so we are performing in a tiny store,” said organizer Laura Carden. “Stores play pivotal roles in our lives. They’re about connection; they anchor communities. People have submitted stories about meeting people, about connection, about losing things, about finding things.” 

Carden is also the general manager of the Harrisville General Store.   

“We came up with the ‘Tiny Stories’ idea as a way to engage the community,” Carden said.  “Firelight is all about community and inclusivity, and we are all about looking outward.” 

Since 2019, Carden, Sarah Sandback and Jazmina Creamer-MacNeil, who are all principal members of the Firelight Theater Workshop (FTW), have been taking turns heading up the annual “Tiny Stories” event. For the past month, Carden, who is in charge this year, has been reviewing submissions of the “tiny stories” submitted by the public. Each year, Firelight puts out a call for stories, which much be less than 100 words around a specific theme. Responses have come from all over the country. 

Past year’s themes include “Friendship,” “Hunger and Homelessness,” “Liminality” and “Reunion.”  Carden says the “Tiny Stories” project is “kind of a pilot” for another, larger performance idea Firelight is working on for the future. 

“Right now, we’re figuring out which stories will be performed, which stories to match with which actors. Some people who submit want to read their own stories, so there will be a mix of reading and performance. People will come into the space and these little scenes will be happening, and they will be played out on a loop, intermixed with readings, so people can come in, walk around and watch all of them,” Carden said during preparations in early June. 

According to Carden, some of this year’s stories are true stories, while others are fiction. Every story which was submitted will be available in print at the performance, and previous years’ stories are available on the FTW website. In past years,  “Tiny Stories”  performances have taken place at Roy’s Store, Peterborough Town Library, in Depot Square park and at the Mariposa Museum. 

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In 2020, during the pandemic, “Tiny Stories” happened via Zoom. 

“The theme during COVID was liminality – being in transition – and people really responded,” Carden said. 

The Firelight Theater Workshop  was founded by Nora Fiffer and Jason Lambert in 2017. The creative team includes Fiffer, Lambert, Carden, Sandback, Creamer-MacNeil and Henry Walters. Since 2020, the group has produced 20 separate site-specific performances, and has been awarded Best Experimental Theater by NH Magazine. Recent productions include “Assisted Living,” a full-length play by Deirdre O’Connor, which had a sold-out run in April and May at the FTW theater space in Peterborough’s New Guernsey Building.

The workshop’s signature series, “We Were Friends,” based on the historic relationship of  Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson, is now in its 12th episode. The workshop was recently invited to perform two installments of “We Were Friends” at the Concord Museum, in Concord, Mass., which contains artifacts mentioned in the play. The episodes will performed outdoors on Thursday, July 18, at 6 p.m. at the Concord Museum. 

Firelight also offers acting classes and workshops taught by Fiffer and Lambert, and Creamer-MacNeil offers voice lessons. 

For information about Firelight Theater Workshop, go to firelighttheatreworkshop.com.