Edie Reaney Chunn is an emerging playwright and performer based in Halifax who loves to work collaboratively and inefficiently. She is a graduate of the University of King’s College with a combined honours degree in English and Contemporary Studies. Recent projects include serving as playwright for the New Pants Project’s August 2019 production of How the Light Lies (On You); as musical performer/composer for Steady Theatre Co.’s production of Macbeth (2019); and as co-stage director for the Halifax Summer Opera Festival’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2018). Edie is also part of Eastern Front Theatre’s RBC Emerging Playwright’s Program (2019-2020), so maybe she will write a play again.

The two pieces included in CFRC’s submission are “She Sits in Her Big Tree”, a piece that was originally used for a puppet show (and is based on the Brother’s Grimm story “The Six Swans”), and a collection of shorter poems. These poems (when read written down) are mostly about the relationship between sound and print, and finding the fun, funny, occasionally annoying space where the aural and the visible meet. I don’t know what they’re about when read out loud, and you lose the printed aspect — the best I can say is that they still approach language playfully, lightly, and with care.

I came up with the name Mother Drone and Other Ancient Spirits of Great Power after googling how to summon demons. I stumbled upon the image of a being called Caim which is depicted as a thrush and drew the album cover. Prior to this I had been working on some music built around the idea of reverb trails, as in taking source material, applying reverb and cutting away as much as possible except the reverb to create a new timbre. As experimental music can be quite cold I felt that by making the piece about the character of Mother Drone I could give it a personality rather than just showcasing whatever technical process I came up with. As such Mother Drone became the spirit of the piece, and the piece became the story of Mother Drone.

Jeremy Kerr is a musician and sound artist based in Kingston, Ontario. He got his start writing and recording music while living in the middle of nowhere as a kid with no internet and nothing better to do. He attended queens university in Kingston and obtained his Bachelor of Music degree in 2018. He continues to make music in a variety of styles and plays regularly around Kingston. He is currently playing bass in the Meringues and working on a noise-pop/drone album titled In the End Everyone Lets You Down.