Watching people’s mental health fracture during the pandemic gave Caravan Theatre’s artistic director Kathy France the desire to stage Every Brilliant Thing, opening tonight in Wolfville before an Annapolis Valley tour.

In Duncan Macmillan’s one-person, hit play a daughter is inspired by her mother’s chronic depression to create a list of every brilliant thing she can think of to remind her mother that life is worth living. As the child grows so does a list of everything from ice cream to roller coasters to the colour yellow.

“With Covid a lot of people I knew were really struggling with their mental health,” says France. “This play is very heartwarming and it’s hopeful and it’s all about community and I live in Wolfville which has a very strong community vibe.”

The play is created with the audience as people are asked to shout out items from the list and (just a few) are asked to impersonate characters. “The play builds community through the audience. It’s not just watching a performer. It’s a very beautiful play.”

Every Brilliant Thing runs Nov. 9 and 10, Al Whittle, Studio Z, Wolfville, 7 p.m.; Nov. 24, Cedar Centre, Windsor, 7 p.m.; Nov. 25, Evergreen Theatre, Margaretsville, 8 p.m. (Tickets are $25 or $20 for students and underwaged at https://linktr.ee/caravantheatre or at the door on the day of the performance.)

France directs Wolfville actor Thea Burton, who had a hand in selecting the music because this play is immersed in music which is a source of joy to the play’s family.

“As the audience watches, it begins to feel like art – in this case music – is for salvation. That is a powerful, subliminal message.”

France has carried her belief in the power of art – in her case theatre – from her native Winnipeg through many countries and finally, in 2012, to Wolfville.

She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a theatre degree and worked with the Popular Theatre Alliance of Manitoba then travelled the world with her husband as he worked for an international organization. “Caravan Theatre was me, an admin-light theatre company run off my laptop wherever I was living and I called people in.”

As artistic director of her professional, not-for-profit company she staged theatre, sometimes in connection with Canadian embassies, in Yugoslavia, Croatia, Syria, Thailand and Nepal.

She lived in Syria for three years where everything had to be translated into Arabic and government-approved. “In Thailand there were a lot of coups. I did a show and there were armoured tanks in the street.” She doubted an audience would come but it did.

Caravan Theatre produced Middle Eastern premieres of Canadian classics Departures and Arrivals and 7 Stories as well as the original, collectively-devised work Xpat Blue, a cabaret extravaganza that delved into the wild and sometimes disturbing life of expats, and Mr. Imagination, a pairing of verse and acrobatics.

France and her husband settled in Wolfville in 2012, first drawn by her brother’s enthusiasm for Nova Scotia after he moved to the province to take a professorship.

She immediately re-invented her on-the-move company launching it with Poetry and Motion (2014), a show mixing mime, poetry and object puppetry. Caravan toured Nova Scotia with A Child’s Christmas in Wales (2015, 2016) and marked the centenary of most Nova Scotia women getting the vote in Fem Fest: Freedom Then and Now (2018).

The company adapted to Covid restrictions and tackled mental health issues in 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane, produced in 2020 as an outdoors tour, and in the 2022 digital performance Feeling Mental Health. Last year Caravan was back on stage with Comedy Caravan: Where the Skit Hits the Fans.

France is crafting a new play based on the comical stories in Fish and Dicks: Case Files from the Digby Neck & Island Fish-Gutting Service & Detective Agency (Moose House Publications), by Ben Robicheau and Jim Prime. It will be staged next November in the Annapolis Valley with a plan to tour it more broadly in Nova Scotia in connection with other theatres.

“I didn’t appreciate the challenges of starting a theatre company in Canada. It’s difficult overseas but the costs are different,” says France. Costs are much higher in Canada and “I still feel I’m new here in a way.”

As a producer and a writer, however, France will never let go of her passion for storytelling.

“Stories are my heart and soul. I’m always attracted to stories about people and about place and I’m always looking at how they can be manifested through text or movement and how they can play out on stage.”

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