Theatre New Brunswick tries novel approach to storytelling

With the rise of social media, getting a tangibleletter or card in your mailbox might not be the most common occurrence anymore.

But many people might still hold fond memories of exchanging correspondence by mail or sending hundreds of Christmas cards to mark the holiday season.

And that's the idea behind the newest offeringfrom Theatre New Brunswick.

Written by playwright and novelist Don Hannah, the project is called Greetings: One Hundred Years of Family Life in Twelve Letters, and it doesn't take place on a stage.

In lieu of a holiday production, the company decided to tell a story in twelve instalments over a series of weeks.

"Thefirst question I get when I tell anyone about it is, 'And when's the play?' Like, no, there is none," said TNB'sartistic director, Natasha MacLellan.

The ticket buyers will receive 12 deliveries, each other telling a part of a family's story, from1924 to 2024.

MacLellan said the company is working to make each delivery beautiful, matching the time period and possibly including something like an interesting item or newspaper clipping the writer may have included in the package.

The idea of sending theatre by mail isn't a new one for the company. In April 2020, in a response to COVID-19, TNBlaunched Dear Rona Letters from Lockdownand in 2021it started Post Script, a delivery of weekly postcards from an unknown friend.

MacLellan said there was a lot of feedback from that project and she learned that people loved the tactile nature of it.

"And a beautiful thing happened, where people were buying the postcard stories for neighbours or for people who perhaps didn't get out very often," she said.

"I went to Don [Hannah] with it, and I said, 'I think there's something beautiful here for Christmas.'"

When the idea was pitched to Hannah, who is from Shediac, he said he didn't quite know what to do with it. But he was inspired by a recent life event.

When an old friend of hisdied from COVID-19, the woman's daughter gave him a package of thingsthat had belonged to her mother.

Included in that, said Hannah, werelocal histories and things about Shediac, but also a file of papers left by her next-door neighbour.

"This was a woman, who had no family and nothing, but there's just all this stuff baptismal records and old letters. And I was sort of going through that file, thinking, how do you tell a story about a life just from looking at old papers?" said Hannah.

"And I was in the midst of that when Natasha called me and I thought, yeah, you know, this is a really interesting thing, because when you look through old family papers and look through stuff, you sort of piece together a story."

That was whenthe story came together. He said the letter series will follow four generations of the family with some drama thrown in exploring a history of how people communicatewith each other using Christmas cards.

MacLellan said, while there is no staged element to the production this year, there is still a theatricality to the project.

"What we do is tell stories that have a performative element to them," she said.

"And whether or not there's a stage and a velvet curtain to pull back, in essence, the person who buys this ticket, the person who reads the letter becomes the actor as well as the audience.

As well, she said people from all over Canada have purchased tickets.

"That, to me, is a level of performance and storytelling that makes me really excited. I just can't wait to hear how people have enjoyed it, how they've read them and it's also becomes a keepsake," she said.

"Theatre is so ephemeral when it's over, there's nothing left.

"You might keep the program, but you can't keep the performance, but people will have this, you know, like you can read it every Christmas, if you want."