The Muse

Marie Pike is the Playwright and Director of The Heart Play, a quick-witted comedy about becoming yourself featuring a host of local talent.

Pike’s first play titled “Garden by Mattel,” was presented during the St. John’s SHORTS Festival in 2019. Now, her first full-length play, “The Heart Play” is being performed at the LSPU Hall for the second time, after its debut in July 2023.

The Muse was lucky enough to interview Pike and get some insight into the making of and inspiration behind her newest play.

Astrological inspiration

When asked what inspired her to create this particular play, Pike explains that one of her main inspirations stemmed from her keen interest in astrology. It was her Venus placement that originally struck her as strange. Pike says her “Venus [is] in Scorpio, which is in detriment.”

“Venus is like the love placement of how you love, how you show up in romantic relationships, and stuff like that” she explains.

Pike then began wondering what that could possibly mean for her, asking herself questions, such as:

“Why am I always involved in twisted relationships?”

“Why do I feel like I have poor self-esteem?”

She explains that, “Basically, if you have a healthy Venus, then you know you tend to be more self-assured and you tend to know your own value and that kind of thing, and then you tend to have healthy relationships.”

Her Venus placement helped her to better understand how she had been feeling and why. It was then that she decided to go to her first Reiki session at Brassy Lassy. During the session, Pike describes that it felt as though something had been put on her chest. Once the session finished, she was told that she had “a lot of stuff there around [her] heart.”

It was that experience that got her thinking, “What if my heart stepped out of me? What would it say? What would it look like?”

“And I really started to do a bit of a deep dive,” says Pike, “[I] went to see the Cure not live but at the Topsail cinema and it was, like, live in Hyde Park. And I thought, oh my god, I feel like my heart would look like Robert Smith- maybe it sounded British for some reason.”

“I just got this voice,” she says. “So, I started writing and basically a monologue came out—and that’s how it started.”

Horo Stories

Pike also hosts a CHMR show called “Horo Stories” alongside cohost Andrya Duff.

“We’ve been doing it for 2 years now,” says Pike. “This is our second season, and I do that with Andrya Duff, who is also in the play. She’s incredible.” Duff plays three characters in the play.

“She’s an amazing dancer, she’s a mover,” says Pike, “So, she always puts on this extra persona to the characters.”

Pike and Duff formed a creative collective together called “Grand Trine” where they approach different artistic mediums using the lens of astrology.

“It’s very abstract stuff,” she explains, “We’re only enthusiastic amateur astrology people.”

Director and playwright

While this isn’t the first play Pike’s written, it is the first play she’s directed.

“This is my first time ever directing anything—The Heart Play, I should say,” she explains, “I directed it in July and now I’m directing it again.”

Pike describes her directing style as more free and open.

“I like for people to have freedom and not be so boxed in with having to do the same thing all the time,” she continues, “I like for there to be a live wire on stage, you never know what’s going to happen, it’s so exciting.”

Collaboration is a key component of Pike’s approach to directing. She says, “I love seeing what other people in the room are saying, how they’re reacting to it. It’s very much a collaboration. As the writer and director, I have a vision and I definitely want to see it through, but I’m more open to the intention changing if I’m in the room and I see what people are saying and where things are going.”

Although she adds that she’s uncertain she’d feel as confident if it were someone else’s work she was directing. Whereas with her own work, she says, “I have the vision, I know exactly what I want and if things don’t work out that way I’m so open that I’m like, oh cool, let’s go in that direction.”

Pike says that directing has taught her many things, including patience and how to adapt, as everyone approaches things differently. She says “It’s being a teacher but also being a student at the same time.”

Round 2 of The Heart Play

The Heart Play debuted last July at the LSPU Hall. Pike explains that the play returning to the stage this week holds some significance.

“I was so delighted that RCA reached out,” she says, “I was delighted to hear that they loved the production and that they wanted it in February because that was always the plan when I pitched it for funding—But yeah, I always thought, The Heart Play, for heart month, for Valentine’s day. And, also, like I want to do a play for Christmas, I want to do a play for Halloween. I like celebrating festivities; any way to blow up something and characterize it and have fun with a theme, I love that.”

When discussing the RCA Theatre Company, Pike says, “I love RCA, I love everything they do. They’ve been around since the eighties maybe the seventies, but yeah they’ve been around forever, they’re so cool, so many awesome people have come from there and I’ve always wanted a poster going into the theatre.”

Pike then explains how grateful she is that RCA asked for The Heart Play to be part of their presentation series for the 2023-24 season, along with two other productions happening in March and April.

Due to her open approach to directing, Pike explains that the play won’t be exactly the same this time around. “It is a little bit different,” she says. “We are going in a different direction, same script, same actors, and the music has changed. It’s the same but it’s different.”

The takeaway

When asked if she intends for there to be a particular takeaway for audiences, Pike says, “It’s definitely open to interpretation, and I think there’s quite a bit of depth there, it might even be seen as kind of a self-help play.”

She explains that a friend from High School has previously come up to her after a show, saying, “Oh my god, you’ve been doing your shadow work!”

For the most part, she states, she believes people “will get that it’s very much around boundaries and taking on other people’s stuff versus carrying our own stuff and allowing space for that.”

There’s an intentional balance between grief and comedy.

Granted, she adds that she’s always trepidacious to say that it’s a comedy, “It’s absurd—it’s written that way,” says Pike, “it’s supposed to be a comedy, but some people might not laugh so it’s totally up to people and what they find funny. It’s over the top, it’s very characterized.”

“It’s very in the ether,” she continues, “I feel like that’s how I write, it’s like you don’t know if this is real life or if it’s in a dream or if it’s both—it’s subversive—The realist character in the play, I think, is the heart and a heart can’t be personified, so it’s that kind of subversion of what you think is real is not real and the boundaries we have in the world and the structures aren’t real.”

The Heart Play premieres its second showing at the LSPU hall on February 22nd and runs until the 25th. To buy tickets visit: https://lspuhall.ca/event/rcat-presents-the-heart-play/

Editor’s note: Special thanks to Marie Pike for taking the time to speak with The Muse.