Dayna Lea Hoffman, A Hundred Words For Snow, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“It doesn’t feel that long ago since I was 15,” says Dayna Lea Hoffmann. “I look back and it was nearly 10 years ago….”

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“This is me kissing my youth goodbye,” she says at the advanced age of nearly-25, “a love letter to my youth.” Hoffman is musing on a  feeling of closeness to the teenage character through whose eyes we see the world, both in long-shots and close-ups, in A Hundred Words For Snow.

In the 2018 solo play by the English writer Tatty Hennessy, the finale of the Northern Light Theatre season, 15-year-old Rory sets forth on an expedition to the North Pole with her dad. The ashes of her dad, to be precise. In life he was a geography teacher fascinated by exploration in the north. “One day we’ll go,” he’d told Rory. It was his fondest dream. And, bright, feisty and grieving as she is, she decides to step up and make it happen.

The chords of that decision resonate with an actor who, a scant year out of U of A theatre school (with a BFA), has brought a startlingly varied theatrical skill set to the scene here. As you’ll know if you caught a 2021 Fringe production of the black comedy The Man Who Fell To Pieces, a literal deconstruction of a mental breakdown, dance, red-nose clowning, circus acrobatics, juggling are well within the Hoffmann compass. More recently, in All The Little Animals I Have Eaten, an edgy satire by Pochsy creator Karen Hines at Shadow Theatre, Hoffmann starred as a beleaguered debt-oppressed grad student surrounded by her alter-egos, a very physical sort of haunting.

Hoffmann is her own theatre story, with decisive segués. The opening chapters happen on the West Coast. Theatre, she says, “was never my parents’ first choice for a career. My mom was really set on my doing environmental toxicology.” But at a certain point, “fatigue with all the terrible things that are happening, climate change, global warming, deforestation, the decline of the environment …” set in.

“I don’t know if I could have seen myself working in that field, such a tough place to be mentally…. Instead I’m doing what I really love! And I think I made the right choice.”

Environmental issues do weave their way through A Hundred Words For Snow, to be sure. Rory knows a lot about snow, and North Poles plural, and the fate of polar bears in a melting world, for example. “But the play talks about them without making the whole play about them,” as Hoffmann puts it. “The issues resonate in the character, and how she feels about (them). I think it’s more interesting, more captivating, to see a character struggling with a realization.” She loves the play for the way it doesn’t “preach to the choir.”

At 17, Hoffmann exited Surrey where she grew up, and in “extensive gap year” found herself at Douglas College, in a basement theatre studio with an excellent faculty. There was a circus school down the road,” she says. “I’d walk by and think that would be really cool to do one day.” When a job opened up there, “an amazing four years ensued: administration to juggling in my spare time to teaching juggling classes to learning aerial silks and balancing acts….”

That kind of training is “so expensive, not very accessible. So I’m very grateful I had the chance.” And if she had the opportunity to create a theatre experience performing with silks, “or something in the air,” she’d jump at it, she says.

““My dream is to produce a juggling show,” Hoffmann says. “Juggling is a passion I don’t think I’ll ever let go.” What’s the appeal? “It’s mental, it’s patterns, it’s math…. I’m really inspired by (the Euro troupe) Gandini. “They combine fractal shapes with partner juggling” and have an archive of shows that includes ballet-juggling hybrids and opera partnerships.

As for clowning, Hoffmann was so drawn to that theatrical art she deferred her entry into the U of A’s BFA acting degree program by a year, and came to Edmonton to study with the notable clown mentor Jan Henderson. The clown who emerged from that course, Jelby (“like jellybean”), was “silent and sweet.” Later studies at the U of A with Michael Kennard (aka Mump of the horror clowns Mump and Smoot) darkened that clownly palette).

We can look for Rat Academy, a clown show by Hoffman and her clowning partner Katie Yoner, at Nextfest and then the Fringe. Hoffmann is the last rat in Edmonton who mentors an escaped lab rat in survival skills.

When Hoffmann made her move from sea level to Edmonton, “my friends warned me you’re gonna hate it; you don’t get to see the ocean. I went into it blind,” she says. “I learned to drive, packed up and drove here. And I haven’t been home for longer than two weeks…. I don’t know that I’ll ever move back; the theatre community has been so welcoming here. I’ve had so many opportunities; l have friends.”

And this: “I work at the Fringe and I really love my job.” It’s been a multi-faceted learning experience, with all kinds of assignments.  “They’ve taught me to stage manage; I was stage manager for the outdoor stages. I’ve contracted musicians. I’ve worked at KidsFringe…. I started as a programming assistant (to Fringe director Murray Utas). They’ve hired me as a contract producer (for Fringe Theatre’s production of Evandalism, for example).”

This year Hoffmann is the “BYOV liaison” person. “They took me under their wing, and trained me. And I’m so grateful! All stuff I can apply to producing theatre myself.”

For Hoffmann it’s been a year, her first since graduation, of non-stop work, including last summer’s Freewill Shakespeare Festival and a plum role as an eerie little girl who knows too much about a haunted theatre in  Dead Centre of Town XIII. “I couldn’t  have hoped for a better emergence, really.”

As for the solo challenges of A Hundred Words For Snow, Hoffmann says “a year ago I was terrified. I read the play at least once a week for a year.” Even two months ago, she’d answer “no, I’m scared” to the question from friends “are you excited?”

Dayna Lea Hoffmann in All The Little Animals I Have Eaten, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson.

“I thought my butt’s gonna fall of, my heart’s going to fall out. What am I going to do?” It was the experience of All The Little Animals I Have Eaten that prepared her, she thinks. “I learned a lot in that show that’s helping me move forward in this one. It kind of showed me I can do work like this…. Especially for a recent grad who still has a lot to learn.” For one thing, reactions to that play, a dramatic departure in Shadow Theatre programming, were diverse (as I can confirm) and not all positive. “I felt very strongly about the play itself. And it taught me a lot about letting go of what people think of you, that fear of judgment.”

She feels a strong attachment to the story in A Hundred Words For Snow, too. “It’s a little more accessible; and I feel stronger about being able to tell a story regardless of what people think.”

For Hoffmann, it’s about “youthfulness and familial relationships. It’s about being reckless and not carefully considering consequences, making mistakes.” She’s bemused by the thought that “I’ve always been the youngest, in any given setting. It’s the last time I’m going to be able to play 15. Soon I’ll hit 25, and that’s a different world….”

Most obviously, the play is about grief, and a daughter-father bond. “I really connect with that,” says Hoffmann, who lost her own father in her teenage years. But “something that really strikes me is the relationship the character has with her mother, a mother-daughter thing. Something I have a lot of experience with; I didn’t get along great with my mom.”

This will be the first time her mother will have seen a show in which Hoffmann has appeared. “And that’ll be emotional…. It’s made the play so much more personal. It feels meant for me.”

PREVIEW

A Hundred Words For Snow

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written by: Tatty Hennessy

Directed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Dayna Lee Hoffmann

Where: Studio Theatre, ATB Financial Arts Barn

Running: through May 6

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com