Where to begin? This is the first question in composing a story. Where to begin? In May of 2020 the NCT Board of Directors made a difficult but proactive decision regarding the 2020/2021 theatre season: We aren’t doing it. Instead, we put a pin in the planned season and moved forward in a new direction; a direction that led me to The Unravelling.

I was first drawn to Fin Kennedy’s one act from the name alone. I felt that so much of everything we had previously known was doing just that—unravelling. However, after reading it I was pulled to it for so many more reasons. Thematically, it speaks to things both physical and emotional that we pass on from generation to generation. It speaks to the ways in which we deal with loss and love and hardship. It speaks to what can happen when we begin to trust ourselves and recognize the power we have to mold our own stories.

On the surface the story is about a Mother and her daughters. The mother is a master storyteller who lures her customers into returning to the shop through the use of stories. She challenges her daughters to tell tales inspired by the fabrics in the shop. The weaver of the best tale will inherit the shop. Simple enough. Or is it? Through the stories the daughters learn they too possess the talent of telling a story.

Fin Kennedy embraces magical realism and uses it to take us into a world where we are intricately connected to each other as the stories we tell. A world wherein there is no end to the stories being told, and where we can all hope to find the magic within ourselves that propels not only our own but others’ stories forward.

I was fortunate to have a fabulous cast whose experience on the stage was paramount to the success of the production, and a technical team whose expertise provided the best guidance for shooting and the subsequent stream of The Unraveling.