#30 – Jessica Anderson, Interim Director, Hamilton Fringe

Jessica Anderson is an arts administrator, playwright and all-around theatre enthusiast. She has several years of administrative experience having previously worked for the Living Arts Centre, the Ottawa Arts Court Foundation, the Ottawa Little Theatre and Pat the Dog Theatre Creation. Jessica studied drama and English literature at Queen’s University and Scriptwriting at Algonquin College. Jessica’s first full-length play, My Purple Wig, has been short-listed for several awards and premiered Off-Broadway at the Lion Theatre in November of 2013. She was the recipient of the 2012 RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwrights Award for her play The Gods and Calvin Brewer. Her most recent play, A Different Kind of Job, premiered as part of the TA2 Studio Series at Theatre Aquarius.

http://hamiltonfringe.ca
Twitter: @HamOntFringe

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Transcript

Transcript auto generated. 

Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 30 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. On Stageworthy I interview people who make theatre actors, directors, playwrights and more and talk to them about everything from why they chose the theatre to their work process and anything in between. My guest is Jessica Anderson, a playwright and arts administrator and also the interim director of the Hamilton Fringe Festival. Speaking of Hamilton fringe, my play, the commandment opens at Hamilton fringe this Friday, July 15, at 10:30pm. If you’re in the area, I hope you can come and join me. You can find stage really on Facebook and Twitter at stage with the pod and you can find the website at stage with a podcast.com. If you like what you hear, I hope you’ll subscribe on iTunes or Google music or whatever podcast app you use and consider leaving a comment or rating.

Jessica, thanks. Thanks for coming on the podcast. And I wanted to start just by asking you about your history with the Hamilton fringe. And how long have you been with the fringe?

Jessica Anderson
I’ve only been with the fringe since February. So frostbites was my first week at the fringe actually. So it’s a great way to jump in. And so I’m the Interim festival director while Claire calm and the D is on maternity leave. So I’ve started on a contract with them to kind of take us through the 13th Fringe Festival. While she’s taking care of her baby,

Phil Rickaby
do you? I mean, were you involved with fringe at all before you came as volunteer or anything

Jessica Anderson
like that? I actually didn’t live in Hamilton. Before that I was involved as a patron. Okay, I’ve been to the Hamilton fringe for the last few years because I’ve been part of the playwright at part of the playwrights unit theatre Aquarius. Okay, so it was my first kind of intro into Hamilton. But I was living in Waterloo at the time. So I started coming more and more to Hamilton twice a month for for about two years to be to do this unit. I was like, I like kind of what’s going on in Hamilton and started testing, I think I want to be part of this scene and what’s developing here. So on my job, my contract ended in Waterloo and I thought, Where am I going to go, I thought, well, I’m going to come to Hamilton, I had to show in the studio series at Aquarius in December, really liked it here. So I moved in December, that’s when this job posting came up. So I thought, well, this might be a good way to get jump right in to the community. So I applied for the job and I got the job in January. So that was my sort of history. I was a patron because I was involved with other writers in Hamilton, I certainly had been to the Hamilton fringe a couple of times. And

Phil Rickaby
so as far as your theatre career goes, you’ve been primarily a playwright.

Jessica Anderson
Absolutely. So

Phil Rickaby
just to kind of get away from the fringe for a second. What what is it that drew you to writing plays?

Jessica Anderson
I, I was always really quiet. I was really shy kid. And but I always liked Drama and Theatre. So when I was this, this was my, my big moment when I was 10. I wrote a murder mystery play called murder and other problems. And I made my grade five class acted out. I think kind of sat Washington, I was like, it was sort of fun to see my voice in different voices, you know, it gave me a voice without actually having to speak in a weird way. And I was like, I like that, like I like that I can express myself but I you know, don’t, that I have this kind of barrier. And I have this ability to almost like become different people. So that that’s kind of just was my first sort of like, oh, I kind of like this, you know, it’s and then you know, it was successful at tour to the classroom next door. So you know, yeah, we get a tour like that right out of the gate. So, and then I got involved with with dancing and they made us take an acting class to perform and I thought why like, I’m liking theatre, so I ended up going to a performing arts high school in Toronto. I was born and raised in Oakville, but I commuted I was a commuter kid to school, because of the school they had playwriting options is one of their English kind of electives. So I started playwriting more than you know, and taking act because I was a drama major. So it was primarily focused on acting and I kind of the more actors I got to know the more I figured out I’m not going to be an actor, you know, I, I know that. But we did a I did the playwriting course it ended up going to the serious drama festivals. So we kind of did that I did an undergrad in drama and English. And then doing that, what do I do with this drama degree now? And what do I want to do? And I kind of went back to the writing and thought I’d really like to do more writing. I didn’t do as much of it University. I took playwriting, but I you know, it was mostly essays and a lot of it was reading and things like that. So I went to college and I did a graduate certificate in script writing, which was all writing in different mediums and I thought, I want to portfolio I want something. I want to learn how to get a job. Yeah. Which college is kind of more, it’s more, you know, university was very, this is how you think and let’s discuss the meaning of Hamlet and the His external struggle. Coaches are much like, this is how you work. Yes. This is how you make money. Yeah. Which college? I went to Algonquin College, in Ottawa. So and then from there, I started working on a plane, I went to college with this delusion because I was a theatre undergrad that everybody wanted to do theatre. And of course, everybody wanted to write movies.

Phil Rickaby
Yes, yeah.

Jessica Anderson
So home, but I bet so I was kind of the theatre person in that programme. So I started writing a play there. And it took six years, that was my first full length production from that homework assignment that 15 Page play, ended up going to play in New York in 2013. And so and they and culture taught me how to kind of keep going and keep pursuing contests and keep your work out there and kind of how to do that. So kind of since then, I’ve been kept on truckin.

Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting how when people think I know I’ve encountered this a lot when it’s like, reading scripts, it always ends up to skew more towards the screenplay of the movie than then theatre. And yet, I feel like I don’t know. I don’t know much about the theatre scene in Hamilton. I’m hoping to learn a lot today at the art crawl and and during fringe, but I know in Toronto, there’s all kinds of there’s the storefront and indie theatre is kind of exploding and things like that. I would think that I’d be more interested in like writing for the theatre than for a movie where the budget is astronomical. And he’s always like, have to get the camera things like that. That’s just me.

Jessica Anderson
No, and I mean, I think theatre too, it teaches you how to get to the core of a character because you don’t have visual elements to explain your story all the time, you have to kind of think, how am I going to tell the story, if I can only tell it through words and character, you know, if there is a small budget, you know, it’s great to have a budget for certain costumes and all that. But, you know, I was never a visual writer. So that’s kind of why I was never a good screenwriter, I didn’t I don’t think visually,

Phil Rickaby
I have a similar thing. I think there’s a lot of that in playwriting, because you’re so used to really all you have is the words. And the, the words mostly is what you have on the stage and the few actions but you certainly can’t have like a big action scene for the most

Jessica Anderson
part, or if you can, it might be very interpretive, you know, the director might take some some liberty with, with that. And I think with playwriting to your, which is another different thing than screenwriting is, they can’t change any of your words, they can certainly change any of your stage directions, but can change your words, they can change your words. So it’s protected in a way that that screenplays aren’t when it’s optioned. And it all of a sudden becomes someone else’s property.

Phil Rickaby
I also find that in in playwriting, there’s more of an acknowledgement of the collaboration because I often like stage directions are for me are often so so minimal, because I know they’re going to be ignored, or, or changed or suggested or taken as a suggestion. So it becomes more of the collaboration.

Jessica Anderson
Yeah, you certainly see that with with directors, and you certainly see that in there in the room too, when it depends on how, you know, it’s been something as simple as how it’s what your stage sizes, you know, things might have to change. Or sometimes, yeah, you know, it’s actors going, I don’t feel like I should sit down on that line, you know, inside my building to this this point. So I mean, I, I try to avoid, you know, if I really want something in, try to make my stage directions really sparse and like, you have to pay attention to that one, because I only gave you three. So please acknowledge the, like the constraint

Phil Rickaby
of playwriting, because you don’t have you know, you’re not going to have a budget. So you have to write with minimalist tendencies really, in a way that you wouldn’t have to for for film.

Jessica Anderson
No, I think that that is part of what why a lot of a lot of even good movies started as play. I mean, Aaron Sorkin started as a playwright and you know, no read screenplays, but, you know, it really lets you focus on storytelling. You really have to focus on the story and the arc of the story and structurally you cannot get to, you know, if you take away a lot of movies you look at you take away a lot of the special effects and stuff. There is no core real story and playwriting, whether you want to write for movies or theatre or anything like that, it will teach You know how to structure you know how to storytel that way. And it will teach you to be creative with stage directions, I think Sara rule has a play, which has one of my favourite stage directions, which is a horse appears on stage and brackets a real horse would be nice, but not necessary, you know, kind of, yeah. Which, you know, you see, you can get creative and you can you can and theatre let you do that audiences will accept that in a play will accept kind of representational imagery. They don’t do that in the movie. No,

Phil Rickaby
no, they don’t, well, maybe some really weird art house. Right, very rarely, you’re not

Jessica Anderson
gonna go to Cineplex and see something like

Phil Rickaby
that, no. And another thing that I like that sort of interesting about sort of that, that sort of like the minimalist, and, and being able to be a little more interpretive, because falls into sort of the fringe aspect, in that. For most fringe plays, you certainly don’t don’t have a set or certainly can’t afford one. But if you can, you better make sure you can get that in your 15 minutes and get out in 15 minutes. And you so you have to be really economical, which sort of lends more towards the being as minimal as possible with, with what you have, which leads to some really creative solutions

Jessica Anderson
for fringe. No. And I think you have to kind of think outside the box. And you have to think even even as simple as you don’t choose your own venue, you know, you working with the space that you are given. And you could be doing also you could be doing a fringe tour with the same show and you walk into your third venue and you go, Oh, this wasn’t like the one in Calgary. Yeah, we’ve got to make some adjustments. But I think it makes you think about your work too. And and think about, Okay, how’s it what’s the best way I can convey the message and the point of this piece that makes you think, what is the point of my piece? And what is the most important thing I want to say? Because you have to be, you know, economical with what you’re showing and what you’re doing in terms of set and costume. So I think it makes you focus on really the message and what why do I want to put on this piece I want to I want to say with this piece. And it will make you kind of pare that thinking down outside of, you know, a huge splashy sets are cautions anything like that. And it really lets people focus on the work in a way that doesn’t always happen with you know, sort of bigger budget production.

Phil Rickaby
So you have to be flexible. Yeah. Because like you said, if you walk into Georgia, for instance, you walk into one venue, you might have to do a little bit of a block in and make it work with what you have, or even to hit a light because the lighting situation will be different than the location. So it’s really, you always just have to roll with whatever you’re given. Can you Is there something that you can think of that makes the Hamilton friend unique in the fringe?

Jessica Anderson
The world, the Fringe Festival? What I noticed I lived in Ottawa for years. And I you know, I’m certainly familiar with Toronto and other areas. What is big thing with Hamilton in a way, and this is the artistic community in general is the cross collaboration between the disciplines, we do a gallery series in the art galleries, the 20 Minute shows are there, we you know, we partner with the regional theatre here, they they give, they’re one of our venues, and they’re very happy to be and they’re one of our big sponsors, you don’t see that kind of cross in big urban centres, you don’t always see the same like, you won’t see the same people at, you know, at film festivals that you see at the fringe. Here you do.

Phil Rickaby
The cross collaboration is interesting, because I know, having been I mean, I’ve been at it now, I’ve toured through a number of Fringe Festivals, including Toronto. In a lot of cases, the the disciplines don’t cross pollinate. So you’ll find the actors and the dancers do not really socialise much often find the dance the dance pieces, and the dance groups are in their own place and occasionally, right. Is there even really content?

Jessica Anderson
Well, I mean, one more smaller than the Toronto fringe. So there’s that we end our fringe club is of the Baltimore house, which is the local, you know, a local hangout for a lot of artists. So there is that kind of, you know, for instance, is sure to have our dance pieces are in to art gallery. So even if those people aren’t in the fringe, it’s dancers working, you know, with in conjunction with kind of, by default, the visual art community, right. And we can’t you know, it’s kind of like art crawl is something where you’ll go out and you’ll talk to and people will be on the street and talking about different things. You can go up and you can talk to a mixed media specialist, even if you’re a theatre artist, or if you’re a ballerina, you can go and you can talk to a filmmaker or a musician, and Hilton has this. It’s collectively I think, we want to show people what we’re doing. And we want people to know that there is you know, there is something here and something is growing something exciting is happening. So there is this kind of you do get the sense that The artistic community as a whole wants to do work together to promote that. And to really, you know, it’s not like Well, no, if you get you’re successful, we won’t be it’s no, if we do this together, yeah. And we, we keep creating work, and we keep doing it. And we keep showing people and keep bringing people in which I think the fringe is great for bringing people in to the city. This is what we’re doing, you know, to kind of eliminate any kind of misconceptions or kind of pre notions people have about Hamilton who’ve never been here, or maybe know it, mostly as steeltown or something that they pass through on the way to wherever they might be going. That kind of thing. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting, just the idea of like, because every fringe is different. And every friend, every fringe has its own way of doing things so that you find the personality of the footage. And you were talking about, like the audience, and the art crawl helps to build the audience and the collaboration. And that one person doesn’t take away from another. When I was doing a show at the Montreal fringe, they had this seminar where the first like, even before they opened, the artists were arriving, they have a seminar, similar to the Europe to publicity seminar, like giving an idea of what’s unique about Montreal. And the one thing that stuck, that stuck with me and has always stuck with me is that there is on the internet forever. That it’s like you said your success does not diminish my success. Your success can help my successes, I think that’s very fringe,

Jessica Anderson
it’s very fringe. And I think, you know, audience builds audience, I mean, there is this sort of, sometimes you see it in, in the bigger urban centres and unit that know you’re going to take away my audience. And if you go to this show, instead of this show, or even you go to big regional instead of fringe, right, we’re dividing audience. And I don’t think that’s true. I think if you generate interest in the art, people want to see more of it, and they want to understand where it comes from. Yeah. And it is a way to generate interest. And the more people we have interested in the community as a whole, the more audience we will build. That way,

Phil Rickaby
it’s like going to a movie does not mean that you’re not going to go to another movie. Exactly. And I think I think that theatres, the independent theatres, especially would benefit from more collaborative promotion that they could, you know, I talked about your show, you talk about my show, we each have our audiences, and then we each have a bigger audience, because we’re sharing because we

Jessica Anderson
build and it’s, it’s one of those things just because you go to big budget doesn’t mean you’re not gonna go to an independent movie, you know, you can you can share that you know, but there is this and fringe is great for that. Because you will see, especially in Hamilton, there is a lot of, you know, after, after a show, hey, this is the next show in this venue, you should check it out, or hey, if you liked our show, and more kind of a fun farce, these other guys are doing improv at a different venue, maybe go check them out, I as a patron of the fringe, like that was great. After shows, I would see people, anybody here and other fringe artists, anybody want to plug your show, and people would stand up and you know, and say yes, you know, I’m here to see these guys, but if you want to come check me out, or I’m here to talk to you, and there there is that sense of No, let’s get as many people out and let’s get as many people into downtown Hamilton, you know, and let them show them what it’s like basically when the artists take over downtown because that’s what we do. You know, it’s on a huge downtown and we you know, we’re over 11 venues and we’re we’re spread out a little bit but we’re pretty concentrated so it’s a good way to sort of see what’s going on downtown to it

Phil Rickaby
looks to me like you could walk to most venues in about from one venue to another 20 minutes at the most

Jessica Anderson
at the most yeah and people think some of those 20 minute venues are farther because like we are very concentrated

Phil Rickaby
it sure is interesting because that’s a little bit like like the Edmonton flame which is very in the venue’s are all concentrated in one area of the city. So that the hardest ones to get to are actually the Bring Your Own venues because everything is like concentrated in just one area which is amazing.

Jessica Anderson
So same as us or bring your own menu at the staircase, I believe like geographically is the farthest venue but it’s got three theatres in it so so there’s lots of programming

Phil Rickaby
you guys do something that is similar to something that Montreal hasn’t done for years your kickoff do something similar to their fringe for longer have people present snide reviews of their of their shows. That’s also a fundraiser for fringe as well. Correct? Yep. Yeah. Is that always been harder fringe here?

Jessica Anderson
No, this is the third year we’re doing it. London does it as well. And what we’ve found And, and my, it’s a good way to kind of get people out. And it’s a good way for audience to kind of decide what they want to see too. And it’s a good way to kind of introduce the fringe to the community. And I know the, in one of the first years they did it, you know, politicians came, and they had a kind of a contest to see, the more money they raised, the better the Shakespearean monologue they got, you know, they got to play a better, they got to, they had to play a villain if they didn’t raise too much money. And they had, they got to play one of the lovers or one of the heroes who they did. So that was kind of a fun thing for them to do. And so there’s a different theme every year last year, because of the PanAm games, it was like the games began, there were improv games and the cheerleading squad from a master came so that it’s kind of a theme thing. And it’s, it’s also a way to celebrate the fringe and kind of get everybody want to be artists and get the chance to meet each other because they’re actually you know, they don’t, they don’t cross over their schedules, you know, match, and a lot of people who would love to see a lot of work camp because they’re in the actual fringe. So it’s a nice way to for the artists to get to meet each other and see what other people are doing. And it’s a nice way for Hamilton to kind of see what the fringe is not everybody knows exactly what a fringe is. So it’s a nice way to be like, No, this is what you’re going to see. And you can see anything like look at the variety we have, because there is dancers magic, there’s improv, there’s theatre, there’s, you know, solo shows, there’s new work there is, you know, work by Sarah Kane. And, you know, there’s, that’s kind of an important thing, you get a real spectrum, the variety of what’s going to happen in the 11 days on that night. And, you know,

Phil Rickaby
the actors, the performers getting together and being able to meet each other is an important part of any fringe. But it’s hard, like you’re saying it’s hard to do. Montreal has a 13 hour, which is a sort of like a night and a talk show variety, right? at like midnight, followed by a dance party. I didn’t really have the energy to do this. It was very one of those things, but it’s always that’s where the actors, that’s where performers will be is by going to that we’re running into, we do

Jessica Anderson
have a fringe Club, where we do have theme nights like that at the Baltimore house, which is just on King William, which is it’s literally at the epicentre of all the venues. So we do have that for the performers. So that is something that is, is popular, and we’re encouraging, you know, more and more people to come out every year and audience members too. It’s nice when audience can meet the artists. And that’s something about Hamilton fringe that you wouldn’t necessarily see with Toronto is much is that they would interact a little bit more because we’re not hitting right to the TTC right there downtown for the day. They’re not coming in real quick for one show. You kind of you like everything is close to you can literally fringe for the day and walk around downtown and

Phil Rickaby
I can find it the different club at the Toronto fringe is a little bit exclusive. That somebody who was not from the community wouldn’t quite feel at home there. It’s it’s a little too inside baseball.

Jessica Anderson
I see. You know, yeah. I’ve been to Toronto. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
There’s a lot it’s something there’s a lot that sets the the Hamilton Fringe Festival apart from some of the other ones and as well as just Hamilton himself. Are there are there things that you’re looking forward to and as your team is, like, you’ve been the interim artistic director of the of the of the fringe for since February? Yep. And so you’ve done your frostbites I didn’t do

Jessica Anderson
frostbites, Claire, Claire, and I kind of came in and she had planned this great, say specific Winter Festival. And that was kind of I officially started as the interim festival director in March. And I came in to sort of help with frostbites, you know, just to be set of hands in February. So Claire curated that which was just really exciting. Hamilton’s first site specific Winter Festival, which was exciting. And so it was a great way to start and kind of see what the what the vision of the future was, and where Claire had kind of built some of her programming. And so but I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s exciting for me is I kind of started right at the time, where we were just getting in the tech writers who are just getting in the publicity, we were just starting to, you know, put together the programming, so I’ve sort of seen, seen just the beginnings and I’ve seen it build and I’m seeing people who are tweeting and putting videos out about their rehearsals, and I’m watching I’m watching them go from you know, literally pieces of paper to these productions that have that are building that I’m really excited to see. You know, it’s kind of like watching something grow up sort of a little bit and seeing how the, you know, seeing what the what the shows become and what the programming is all gonna look like, together because we have such I mean it’s like any fringe. But you know, we have such a wide spectrum of programming this year that I’m really excited to see what the different shows bring to the table and how they complement each other and what people are going to want to see and so But I’m excited to experience it, you know, almost as a patron you get to watch shows we do, we’re busy. But we can meet in the general manager have sort of agreed that we’re going to try try to let each other see some shows like there is always somebody in the fringe office during the fringe, you know that that happens. And that’s, I think everybody would want it that

Phil Rickaby
way. Absolutely, yeah.

Jessica Anderson
But you know, they’re, you know, they’re hopefully they’re, you know, if the companies are willing, there will be opportunities to see rehearsals and I’m, that’s part of the reason I’m excited for the kickoff, because I won’t get to see all 48 shows. So But if all 48 come into a preview, I’m at least gonna get a little bit. So I think that’s why the kickoff is great, too. It’s been I’m selfishly, it’s good for me, because I can see what’s going to happen in the next 11 days. Yeah,

Phil Rickaby
how important are the art crawls to, to fringe because you do, there’s two right before fringe got the one is, tonight, we’re recording this in June and one, July 8, which is I imagine that that one will be hugely important, that

Jessica Anderson
one’s huge for the fringe. And it’s huge for the fringe companies as well. And what we because we encourage the companies to come out and get, you know, postcards and buttons from us, but we also encourage them to go out as a company, and really promote under the branch of the fringe. So we sort of were there more support to promote the companies and to promote people to just to come downtown, and to get, you know, get a binge pass or get a pass and see more than one thing. And that’s a big one for us too. And we really do encourage people, you know, it’s like, don’t just invite your friends, like, come and say, for coming downtown to see this, come see this, you know, it’s a chance to experience something new for the first time, it’s $10. If you if you really don’t like it, it was $10. But why not? This would be this is the time and this is the place to experience something you might you might not have been sure of. And it’s interesting to watch how the different companies promote, you know, their different shows and things like that.

Phil Rickaby
It’s always intrigued because I know, for myself, I never have a problem with with the $10. I know that it’s only you know, it’s only $10, I always get a little nervous about the 90 Minute myself. Because if it’s $10 for an hour, I always feel like it’s an hour. If I don’t like it, it’s only an hour, something about passing that 60 minute mark, if it’s bad, it just is not good. I just want one of those painful moments.

Jessica Anderson
We have we do have for 90 minutes slots, and which is interesting now because we’re seeing it in the world of you know, professional theory that the 90 minute one act is very rapidly replacing the two hour show with

Phil Rickaby
determine the indie theatre, I see that a lot.

Jessica Anderson
Yeah. So I think I actually think it’s, it’s actually good, because it kind of in this, this is what professional theatres are picking up. So I think those slots are good. And I mean, you know, it’s like anything else sometimes shows can feel too long if they’re 10 minutes, you know, if they’re on a certain quality. But but it can be, it can be fun. And we have we do have the 90 minute slots, we also have a 20 minute gallery series. So you can go and check out you can see the you know, the shorter shows with a longer shirt and you can kind of balance out. And it is quite amazing what people can say in in 20 minutes. And then the 90 minutes, you know, this year, I think, you know, I have some they sound interesting, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the longer shows are like and what they’re about.

Phil Rickaby
Are they returning companies that you enjoy watching?

Jessica Anderson
I know Ryan Ciro’s company make Art Theatre, they tend to do the fringe every year. And they they always have some fun stuff going on. I’ve been last couple of years, and that’s the one I’ve seen return or they they they’ve made it in through the lottery, you know, last couple years. But I know that people, people do come out to see them. And they usually do fund shows. And they’re not in the community, as well as they do shows outside of the fringe. So they’re doing a show this year. So it’ll be interesting to see they did Shakespeare last year. So they did a condensed version of what to do, but nothing at this year. It’s an original script. So it’s it’s always interesting to see what when you’re kind of going back and forth between that kind of programming what people do and and how they’re different and how people approach doing a pre written work as opposed to brand new work. Yeah, that’s

Phil Rickaby
interesting. As a recent transplant, Hamilton, I mean, you you came here like twice a month before you move. Yeah, but now you now that you live here. What’s the biggest thing that surprised you about Hamilton when you lived here at once you started living here?

Jessica Anderson
What was the second question? I think I think the big thing that did surprise me was just how not that this was to be unexpected, but how easy it was to talk to people about the arts and how and how proud Old people were to be from Hamilton, you shouldn’t be proud. But, you know, I went to talk to, you know, somebody at City Hall and she sat down with me and she was like, I got to speak at the restaurant scene. I gotta tell you that the cultural scene, she was excited to share their city people are really proud here. And they’re really easy to talk to. And they’re really easy. You know, as somebody new who I, you know, I lived in Ottawa for years. I didn’t, you know, I knew a couple people here, but not that many, how many people I was able to call them like, yeah, meet you for coffee and didn’t didn’t know me. Yeah, sure. Are you happy? I want and we’re excited. Like, I want to tell you why you should move here and why you should stay here. And people are really, really excited about what’s going on here. And and there is that energy, and you don’t feel that energy when you’re only here twice a month, but you certainly feel it. When you’re here. And people don’t know, you have to know, don’t you know, you have to stay here you have to be part of what’s going on right now. And not just not just artistically, people are excited about, you know, the hospitality industry here and things I didn’t know, like, you know, there are hiking trails in Hamilton, which is not something that is widely associated, but they’re beautiful, and all that kind of thing. So I think that and it’s a very distinctive landscape. Not to I mean, I’m from Oklahoma to bash on Oak Hill, but there are parts of Ohio where I could just as easily be embarrassed because I know that store is there. And it’s all lined up. And it’s the same thing. Hamilton, there is never any dope, no matter where you go in the city that you were in Hamilton. It’s very distinctive, physically and visually, the escarpment and just because of the nature of the way the businesses are like there is there’s a very specific aesthetic and feel that you would there’s no doubt that you’re in Hamilton, culturally, you know, it’s it’s it is its own. It’s something

Phil Rickaby
I really want to thank you for talking to me.

Jessica Anderson
Thank you for having me.

Phil Rickaby
Thank you.