​PROLOGUE

 

Diane Flacks and Tommie-Amber Pirie here...let us tell you how this whole thing came about.

 

​A little while ago, we re-discovered a play that she and we had read years ago, the Pulitzer-nominated Collected Stories by Donald Margulies. While we were pinned down in our wintery East End Toronto home by a blizzard of snow, we decided to give it another read over coffee. We were stunned by how relevant this gorgeous, tough, funny, brutal, shocking two-hander is to this moment in time.

 

Collected Stories ran on Broadway in 1997 with Sarah Paulson and the late, great Linda Lavin, and then again with Debra Messing and Linda Lavin in 2010. It’s about Ruth, a venerable short story writer in her 50’s and a younger protege, Lisa, her writing student. It’s a deeply funny morality tale that asks whether a writer can use another person’s life in their work without their permission. What is appropriation? What is friendship? Jealousy? What happens to our feminist ideals when ambition is at play? What is fair game? We were so taken by the play and its relevance, that we knew that we had no choice but to make it happen ourselves. Why? Because in 2025, a play that tackles the subject of who owns a story has become more urgent than ever now that AI can scrape all our data for nothing. Now that so much in life has become transactionally sanctioned. Not to mention that arts and women are once again under threat. 

 

More than that, we are excited to use Collected Stories to launch a theatrical event. Companioned with the play each night, we will bring together some of Canada’s foremost and acclaimed women writers to engage in moderated intimate conversations about the topics that are raised in this prescient piece. 

 

Here’s where you come in:  We are so excited about this venture that we are undertaking to produce it ourselves. To make that happen, we are looking for donors and sponsors who share our vision Collected Stories has huge potential to reach audiences and provoke important dialogue. Our goal is to secure the right funding and collaborators to make sure this production does justice to the incredible script and to the fight that women writers face every day. We’re already in the midst of pre-production, scouting venues, and lining up a team that shares our passion for this event.

 

And we invite you to be a part of the story.

 

By your sponsorship of the project, you’re not just supporting the team of independent, motivated artists who are behind this production. You’re not just going to be seeing Diane Flacks and Tommie-Amber Pirie onstage together for the first time, directed by theatre luminary Alisa Palmer. You’re not just helping to gather some of our most exciting writers at a time when our voices are under unprecedented pressure. You’re contributing to an important conversation about art, power, and love, at a singular moment. 

Let’s create something unforgettable.

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Tommie-Amber and Diane

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