ABBY PAIGE

LES FILLES DU QUOI? opens in just two weeks! Since April, I’ve been meeting with the amazing production team at Lost Nation Theater and with my brilliant director Kim Bent for preliminary rehearsals. This show has been a very long time in the making. I wrote the first chunk of it in 2017 for a night of cabaret-style solo performances organized by Satellite Théâtre in New Brunswick. In 2018, I received grants from the New Brunswick Arts Board and the Canada Council for the Arts to do some work-in-progress performances of the script, which took place in early 2019 in New Brunswick, Maine, and Vermont. The show was scheduled to premiere in the summer of 2020, but courtesy of COVID, has been on the back burner for the two years since. It’s taken me a long time to trust that this is now actually going to happen, but with each step that we move closer to opening night — every time I practice my lines or try on a costume or send someone the link to buy their tickets — the ground beneath me, which has felt a lot like quicksand during the pandemic, has gotten a little more solid, and I feel a little more confident about taking the leap toward an audience.

To celebrate this growing sense of gratitude and excitement, I share with you my LES FILLES DU QUOI? Playlist. These songs, that have accompanied me during the past five years of work, will get you in the mood for an evening of joyful and intimate live theater!

Also from the department of gratitude and excitement: I was honored to be invited back to The French-Canadian Legacy Podcast to talk about the new show and some other recent projects! Their new episode is all about Les filles du QUOI?, and host Jesse Martineau asked so many great questions! He made it easy for me to emerge from non-verbal, pandemic hermit mode and actually say some good things about my work. I hope you’ll give it a listen. Jesse and his podcast co-creator Mike Campbell have done such an amazing job spreading the word about all things New England Franco since I was on their seventh episode a few years ago! You should go back and check out their whole archives.

Then please come celebrate with me our return to the sacred space of live performance, June 16-26 at Lost Nation Theater in Montpelier, VT — which, by the way, for those still COVID-cautious like me, has a really awesome air purification system and is adhering to Broadway’s standard COVID guidelines for masking and vaccination. And if you’re not nearby (or you’re still not ready to be in the same room) a live stream of the show is also available. Please don’t miss it!