Nora Fiffer: Bringing Big Creative Ideas to a Small Town

You know the saying, “bloom where you’re planted”? My guest, Nora Fiffer, embodies it. She’s an actor, director, and producer in both theater and film and like me, she lives in rural New Hampshire. She moved here from Chicago about eight years ago, and since she’s arrived, she’s co-founded the award-winning Firelight Theatre Workshop, which is now in its seventh season; produced two short films using local talent; and is set to release her first feature film, Another Happy Day, this fall.

Nora also embodies the eighth principle of the No Time to be Timid Manifesto, “Constraints are opportunities.” Like most of us, Nora has limited space, resources, and most of all time, because in her case, Nora’s raising two children. Still, Nora brings big creative ideas to a small town. So fair warning, if you have any excuses for not stepping into your creative practice, Nora’s probably going to shoot them down.

I’m Nora Fiffer, writer, director, actor, and this is No Time to Be Timid.

Hey there, I’m Tricia Rose Burt and I want to ask you some questions. What creative work are you called to do but are too afraid to try? Is there a change you want to see happen in your community, but you’re waiting for someone else to step up and do it? Is fear of failure preventing you from starting new things that will make a difference to your life and to others? In this podcast, we look to artists to lead us and show us how they use creativity and courage to make changes in their lives and in the world. Pay close attention because this is no time to be timid.

Welcome to the show. When I look at the guests we’ve had on the podcast over these three seasons, most of them make their creative work in big cities. You know, the usual suspects, New York and LA, but also Nashville, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Boston. If you’re a regular listener to the show, you know I live and work in rural NH. And I can feel sorry for myself sometimes, thinking if I just lived in a bigger city I could do bigger things. My guest, Nora Fiffer, pokes a hole in that line of thinking.Nora’s an actor, director, and producer in both theater and film. She also lives in the next town over from me. She moved here from Chicago about eight years ago, and since she’s arrived,

she’s co -founded the award -winning Firelight Theatre Workshop, which is now in its seventh season. And with Firelight, she’s acted in and produced two short films using local talent. And with her own company, she’s written, directed, and produced her first feature film, working with some of Hollywood’s finest talent. Lauren Lapkus, known for Orange is the New Black and that HBO series Crashing, and the Emmy and Tony Award nominated Carrie Coon.

You know that saying bloom where you’re planted? Nora embodies it. She also embodies the eighth principle of the No Time to be Timid Manifesto, constraints are opportunities. I mean, like most of us, Nora’s got limited space, resources, and most of all time, because in her case, Nora’s raising two children. Still, Nora brings big ideas to a small town. And in this episode, Nora teaches us that…

Embracing constraints can lead to innovative and creative solutions.
Having projects at different stages of the creative process allows for continuous flow of creativity.
Taking risk and trusting the audience are key to artistic growth.
And finally, balancing creativity and motherhood, or any kind of caregiving, requires patience, time management, and prioritizing your creative work.
So fair warning, if you have any excuses for not stepping into your creative practice, Nora’s probably gonna shoot them down. I’m so glad you’re joining us for our conversation.

Hey, Nora, we are so happy to have you on the show. Hi, Tricia. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. OK, so you came from Chicago to Peterborough, and basically you came from a vibrant, creative city to a small town in New Hampshire, which I will say I gave myself permission to move here because it was ranked 32nd in Best Small Art Towns in America. There was a book that actually listed these things. Yeah, indeed. Having said that, you are still going from the vibrant city of Chicago to a small town in New Hampshire. What was that transition like for you? Well, before living in Chicago, I was living in New York. So it was a big transition. I had never lived anywhere even remotely rural or small town-y. I had visited Peterborough a lot because my husband is from here,

so I had a sense of how vibrant the cultural community was here. And this is a town, I’m not surprised by that statistic because it is bursting with art and music here. However, I couldn’t really picture myself as a theater artist here in this small town. The kind of theater that I was really interested in making and being a part of wasn’t something that I saw available to me here in this community.

We moved with our one and a half year old daughter. And that was actually, that had a lot to do with the move itself. So we’re living in Chicago. We’d been there for 10 years. I was an actor and I worked on big stages, on small stages. That’s the wonderful thing about Chicago is it’s an incredibly alive city for theater, 250 theaters. Many of them storefront theaters that…

really garner attention and full audiences. It’s a very supportive community and an excited theater community. And I really loved working in that environment. Chicago also has this incredible work ethic and collaborative spirit because it’s not, it’s a huge city, but it’s also has this sort of village

vibe where we’re not LA, we’re not New York, we’re there to make the work and we’re there to make the best work possible. And you know that you’re going to be working with people again and again. So there’s this incredible respect in the community. It’s not anonymous. Yeah. It was a fulfilling place to be an actor. So then I had my daughter and I was I had this fantasy that I would be taking

her to auditions with me, you know, just hold my baby while I go in and audition for this Nike commercial or hold my baby while I’m at rehearsal for a play. And I tried that and it was so rough. It was so rough. I mean, it was, I really had a crying baby in the waiting room at auditions and it was disruptive. It was disruptive to everyone, myself and all of the people around me. It was really hard to imagine

what it actually meant to be an actor with a newborn, with a baby, and particularly a theater actor. Lots of auditioning that you have to be available for at any time, but also rehearsals during the day, at night, performances, eight shows a week. It just, I couldn’t really do the math in my head and picture it, especially because theater is not a high paying industry. And so the idea of justifying childcare during that time, it was just really mysterious to me.

So on top of all of those logistics, my appetite for theater had changed. I really felt different. I knew that I wanted to spend time making things and doing things that were deeply important to me, not passively important to me. It really changed the calculus of how I wanted to spend my time. Now I had this baby and she demanded a lot of my energy and attention.

But the time that I could possibly carve out for myself, I wanted it to be very special. And I didn’t know what that was. I was really, really puzzled. And my husband had been missing New England. And we had sort of talked for many years about someday trying it out out here. And I thought, well, I’ve resisted for a while because my career has been city -based and high -volume -based. But now…

everything’s upside down, so how about a little bit more upside down? Let’s try it now. Let’s just do it now. Let’s just do it. And as I was anticipating this conversation with you, Tricia, I was thinking the thing that took the most risk was moving here. More than starting any project that I’ve ever started, it was moving away from a city and not knowing what my professional creative life or day -to -day life would look like. I had no reference point. And I actually at the time thought, well,

when I meet new people, I probably won’t tell them that I’m an actor. I probably will just say that I’m something else. Now why, why would you do that? I know. I mean, identity crisis might be too extreme, but it was a shift of identity. I didn’t think of myself as an actor in the same way. And because the kind of actor that I was or wanted to be didn’t exist out here, I felt like…

it wouldn’t be accurate to say, I’m an actor and hear people reflect back to me a kind of actor that I didn’t identify with. So I was like, I want to redefine myself, but I don’t know what it is yet. Until that kind of theater and those kinds of acting opportunities exist, I will say I’m something else. What did you say that you were? Well, I tried out, I do write, you know, as you know, I write, but I tried out writer

and then I really fumbled around it. I think it wasn’t eloquent. I know that struggle though, because I’m an artist and when I was doing visual work, it was very contemporary works on paper. I was working with tea bags or I was working with masking tape or rusted umbrella parts. And in this community, a lot of people are landscape artists.

And so it was really tricky for me as well because I’m like, I’m not that artist, I’m this kind of artist. And so there was an education. Exactly. I was actually having to educate people at the same time as doing my work. So I understand what you’re saying. Exactly. You can’t just briefly, offhandedly say, well, I’m an artist or I’m an actor because you want to explain. You want to say, well, wait, this is my realm here.

Yeah, yeah. And don’t make the, you know, because then people will fill in the blank and possibly not correctly. Exactly. So how long were you here before you started Firelight? Not very long. So part of this hang up of not being, not wanting to identify as an actor, when I somehow would reveal in conversation that I had been an actor in Chicago and New York, people would say, well, I know an actor. Which never happened in Chicago because we were a dime a dozen, I guess.

But someone would say to me, I know an actor, you should meet this actor. And I thought, OK, well, just because somebody else is an actor or theater doesn’t mean that our creative values align. And so I had had some coffee dates where it was totally a wonderful time to share a general appreciation for theater. But it wasn’t necessarily a deep connection of aesthetics. So I reluctantly went on a

coffee date with this sort of matchmaking theater artist coffee date. And I had very low expectations, but I met my now partner at Firelight Theatre Workshop, Jason Lambert. That’s how you met Jason. Yeah. We both had lived in cities and we both had wanted to make our own work, write our own material as well as work on contemporary material. So,

we quickly discovered that, but I think later confessed that we both thought, there’s no way this person is going to share my values. It hasn’t existed here yet, so it’s not going to happen. So we got lucky. Yeah. No, you know, just, and the timing was right. It was. You were both in places where it just kind of lined up and was right for you. Yes. And it started, I mean, it was incredibly organic. I mean, it was many, many

cups of coffee of just talking about theater and the kinds of theater that we’ve enjoyed being a part of or watching and then getting into, okay, where’s the hunger right now? What is it that we wanna create? And what does the imagined audience need here? What doesn’t exist here yet? We have a manifesto, the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto and one of the points is constraints

are opportunities. And when I was reading about Firelight Theatre, you actually call out that you work with these constraints of time and resources and space and you actually embrace them. Like you like jumping over that hurdle. Talk about how you work with constraints when you’re constructing and developing this immersive theater. And I’d like for you to really explain what immersive theater means, like how you are different from…

a more conventional theater experience for some listeners who may not know. Sure. Well, our first play was a play by David Hare, and the play is called Skylight. It’s a beautiful three -person play. And reading the play, it’s, one might describe it as intimate. It’s three people, it’s deep conversations. Mostly this play is staged on a proscenium set

where the audience is all looking in one direction and it’s a very realistic set. It’s a realistic flat in London that’s a bit run down. Well, we are in a small town in New England and we don’t have a traditional theater space. We have a sort of double office unit in a giant office building that is a little bit loft -like, not quite as raw, but it’s definitely unexpected to walk into this office building, pass a lawyer, pass a dentist office, pass a medical billing office, and then stumble upon this theater. So when we were looking for space to mount this play,

there’s a scene in which the character that I played cooks a meal on stage. She makes a spaghetti dinner with sauce. And we wanted to lean so far into the intimacy of the play that we wanted those smells to be readily available to the audience. We wanted the audience to be able to almost taste that meal along with the actors. We want our audiences to go on the ride, to be as much a part of the experience

without what you might think of as audience participation. We’re not putting anybody on the spot, but we’re bringing people as close as possible to the story so that the identification with the characters can be stronger and the empathy that follows can be stronger. So when we found this space in this office building, it had a little kitchenette. We thought, okay, we can make some pasta sauce in this space. But the layout is such that it is, you could,

you could maybe, if you oriented the audience in one direction, you could probably have maybe 10 good seats. Now, it’s a small town, but we wanted more than 10 people to come see this show. So we thought, OK, here’s our constraint. We have a non -traditional space. But our wish and our aesthetic is to bring people as close to the action as possible. What if we surround ourselves with our audience? So what if there’s audience not on one side, but on

three or four sides, what if we’re in the middle? And the audience sometimes is right next to us. I mean, there were many times in the performance where I was sitting on the corner of an armchair, almost knocking knees with an audience member. They were as close to the kitchen table as we were. And that to us did not feel, it maybe started as a constraint, okay, we’ve got this small space, but it was, it,

it set the tone for who we were as Firelight. Okay, when you come to a Firelight show, the audience orientation will surprise you. It’s never been the same for two shows. We always ask ourselves early on in the process, okay, what do we want the audience experience to be like? And that quickly leads to the more concrete question of how do we want the audience to be oriented? So

what is it like to walk into this space? How do we want them to be a part of it? Do we want them to feel like a voyeur or do we want them to feel like they’re in the world? We had a show where we got 35 swivel chairs and we put the audience in the middle of our studio and we, the actors, were on four sides of the audience. So the audience was oriented in one direction to begin the play.

And then the lights went down and the lights came up to their left. And they were not told that they had to swivel, they had to figure it out. So then they’re knocking knees with each other and maybe a chuckle or two. And now they’re realizing the scene’s happening over here. The lights go down and the lights open up to their right. And so they’re back to swiveling in a different direction. It keeps the audience engaged. I mean, I think a lot of the time when we are

a viewer, we expect, we’re asked to sit back, relax, enjoy, but we really want our audiences to lean in. We want a high level of engagement so that the audience feels very invested, not that they’ve been passively entertained. You can, you know, I love to be passively entertained, particularly at home, but if I’m going out, I really, I hope that something is demanded of me. I want it to feel important that I’m there.

I think what you all have done such a brilliant job of doing is educating your audiences. So when we go into that space, we know, okay, hold onto your hat. It’s not gonna be, I’m not gonna be sitting and looking. Right, exactly, you might be lit. Yeah, there’s some light bleed. Suddenly, okay, I’m part of the scene and I was not expecting that. At Pavilion, we were just, well, we were part of the reunion. It was a beautiful show really moving, very funny. It hit all the buttons, but we were a part of the high school reunion, whether we wanted to be or not. So, yes. Yeah. And it is a very surprising thing to find in this community that is fairly conventional with its work and so for those of us who are looking for something with more of an edge or a more of a, just a break from from expectations. It’s very exciting. Thanks, Tricia. And it’s a very bold thing to do, to say, is this going to work in this community? Is this going to work here? And I think you’ve been met with really open arms.

And part of starting Firelight too, we thought, Jason and I thought very hard about, OK, what if we try out one show? What if we do a play? And we thought, you know what, it’s a lot. We’re already putting in so much work for this show and we know we’re gonna wanna make more. We’re making a theater company and we’re making a season. And when we launched Skylight, we launched a season. And we had the website, I mean, we had the bank account, we did it all in one fell swoop. We’re a theater company now. This is our first show and get ready, cause we’re gonna keep making stuff.

For our listeners who are out there going, I wonder and should I and if you’re in a small town. I mean, it’s almost like, don’t underestimate your audience. I totally agree. Yeah. When I was doing my one woman show, Dan Hurlin, I don’t know if you know Dan, but he’s just so fantastic. I was working on a one woman show and I had some thoughts and things I wanted to put in the show. And I was like, I’m afraid if I put this in the show that half the audience will get up and walk away. And Dan said, don’t underestimate your audience.

Put it in there. My gosh, I have chills. And it was one of the best things that, it was some of the best advice I’ve ever received. Wow. And so, you know, y ‘all didn’t underestimate your audience. Like you’ve put it out there and I think we’ve all kind of risen to the occasion and said, okay, more, more, cause you’re in your seventh season now. Yes, that’s right. I mean, you’re in your seventh season. Yeah. So something’s working. Yeah, thanks. Part of the joy of Firelight and under your and Jason’s leadership is you’re very transparent about the creative process.

Again, in the manifesto, we have a line that says, failure is your friend. And I was reading about… Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Yes, thank you. And how you’re like, it’s not where we want it to be, and you pulled it. We did. And talk about why you pulled it and what you learned from that process, because I think that’s a very brave thing to do. Thank you. It was terrifying. It really was terrifying. We thought, we could lose our audience here.

We have said we’re gonna do this. We promised. We said we were gonna do it. And now we’re not. So we really labored over the decision. We gave it a tremendous amount of thought. We tried all kinds of things to make the show work, to get it to a place where we would be proud to share it. And it became clearer and clearer. It just, there was some, the magic wasn’t there. It wasn’t working.

And we do hold ourselves to pretty high standards. We kind of ask ourselves this question, like, is this a Firelight show? Does this represent who we are? And we’ve put some language to that, but it’s also kind of a feeling. We thought that the risk of sharing something that wasn’t a Firelight show, especially being a young organization, was greater than the risk of saying, hey, we’re not ready. This is not where we want it to be. And we respect you enough

to tell you that and to say, you know, we don’t want you to spend your time and your money on this ticket right now. We want you to come to the next thing and we’re going to devote our energy to the next thing. As scary as that was, we were really careful in the way that we communicated that message and we were blown away. People were writing to us, thank you so much. This is beautiful to be able to say.

To be honest and vulnerable and clear about what makes a Firelight show, what doesn’t. Now we want to see the next thing even more because we know you have standards. Yes. And that not everything is worth our eyeballs and dollars. It’s just not. Everyone’s time is precious. And so to recognize that, I think people actually felt respected. But that totally surprised us. We were very nervous. But it’s funny because…

that’s been such a defining feature of our past few years internally in the collective that has become Firelight. We know that we, you kind of get one of those, you know? We can’t do that every other show. Like, well, this one’s not ready either. So it has helped us really figure out, okay, how do we get it in the timeframe we’ve given ourselves? How do we get it to where we want it? And how much do we want to communicate

in advance? We are, because we create so much work in -house, we don’t necessarily know how long something will take. And I think I was, when I was communicating this about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the time, I think I was using a lot of cooking metaphors. You know, there’s, there’s…

we have a recipe, you have some ingredients, but sometimes you don’t know how everything is going to come together. And sometimes you don’t know how long everything is going to take to really taste the best that it can taste. So we have to, you know, our discipline internally is kind of, while keeping things alive and creative and organic, also being aware of a timeline because with theater,

you do have to tell people that it’s happening and you do have to get people to show up at particular times. It’s not like you’re releasing a piece into the world that people can engage with on their own time. You have to fill those seats. There are some expectations and you have to fill them. That’s a constraint. The model of theater, of having a live performance and selling tickets in advance enough so that people can plan for it and so that your 40 seats are filled for every show. That’s a constraint that we work with so that…

we try and walk that balance of having an organic process that feels free enough to be as creative as we like, but have the parameters of, okay, well, I mean, that last week of rehearsal, whatever the show is, we are working our asses off to get it ready. And that’s a motivator. It’s a real motivator. Yeah, yeah. You know, you you to have that deadline. It’s that constraint of time and budget can help us create some of our best work. I feel that. I really, really feel that. And unlimited

unlimited resources can be paralyzing. I haven’t had a lot of experience with unlimited resources. Yeah, I imagine that. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I imagine it’s really hard if someone comes and gives you a bucket of cash. I know, and all the time in the world. Yeah. One day we can compare notes on how difficult that was for us, Nora. Right, right, right.

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Now you do engage the community outside of your productions. You almost, with Tiny Stories, you’re actually asking the community to create the productions. Yes. Tell a little bit about Tiny Stories. Sure. Tiny Stories is an almost annual event that we do with and for the community where we have a theme. We ask for submissions on that theme

for stories that are 100 words or less, which is very, very difficult. You said you’re inspired by the New York Times. Exactly, the Tiny Love stories. Tiny Love Stories, yeah. Yeah, it’s really beautiful what people have come up with. And it can be very freeing to just create something that’s a snapshot of a story. It can also be really challenging to be your own editor to create something so short. Our first iteration was a partnership with Thing in the Spring, another wonderful event in this area. And…

we invited members of the community to be readers of these stories. And it was really simple and it was really well attended and very beautiful. The theme was friendship and we liked the community involvement so much that we’ve continued this in our season. And in the pandemic…

that was another constraint that we all had to work with in our lives and in our work. Any of us in live theater, why do you think I’m doing a podcast? Yes, exactly. Well, we call it the non -gathering time. We did a car radio experience. We did theater by mail. We shot a film. And for Tiny Stories, we still took submissions. And then we paired interdisciplinary artists with those stories and then created a virtual exhibit.

Tiny Stories has been such a beautiful way to meet new people that we’ve then continued to work with at Firelight too. So it helps us get to know who is interested in working creatively with us. And it also helps us expand our reach because we’re now engaging people as writers, as performers without any rehearsal. It’s like a no pressure celebratory community event.

Well, it’s terrific outreach for Firelight, but it also is helping people kind of step into their creative selves as well. And planting that seed, who might go, well, if I did that, then maybe I can. And it just really fosters this individual creativity that so many of us are hoping that we can step into. We just need a nudge. So, you’re nudging. We are nudging. You mentioned that you made a film. Yeah, we made that during the pandemic, Dinner Time.

You did make that during the, okay. Talk a little bit about how that’s an extension of Firelight. And it was because it was pandemic time. So you thought, okay, let’s still make stuff, but let’s make stuff that we can share once we have live audiences again. Exactly. We’ve made two films at Firelight. One was an adapted play called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rain by a playwright we love, Will Eno. And that

was a really great fit for a film because in the world of the play, there is a camera and the two characters are speaking to a camera. So it was this wonderful natural extension from theater to film.

(Clip from Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rain)

I can see the sky.

I can see the trees bending and the birds flying away somewhere and me. And I’m running in a dress and it’s raining.

There’s the feeling of someone else, of some ghostly you there or just about to be there.

always running. Not away from or toward, just running.

And the sky keeps changing. And me underneath it. Gray, blue, white.

And we really loved the making of that. That was also during the pandemic. I remember rehearsing on Zoom. It must have been early pandemic. It’s all a blur. And then later in the pandemic, we knew that we wanted to keep working in film. Laura Cardin had directed the first film and we knew that we wanted her to keep digging

into that role as a film director. And actually, even though Laura has worked with us in Firelight in many capacities, it was her piece in Tiny Stories that was a video that she had created. That’s when Jason and I looked at each other and said, Laura needs to direct a film. So Tiny Stories really opens the door. We start to see other sides of people.

Yeah, and I really just want to put a pin in that where you might think, this is just a little thing and it doesn’t make a difference and it’s not gonna be a big deal. And suddenly this opened up such a door for Laura, for y ‘all to go, hey, wait a second. We need to give her other opportunities.

She has now directed two beautiful films, produced by Firelight and is developing the next one. I mean, it is, and that was like maybe a one or two minute video that she made during the pandemic. But we saw the vision there in her voice. Yeah. Yeah. And you because you never know how people are how people will engage with it and not everyone will engage with it in the same way. And that’s something just in terms of that audience building for Firelight or really anything else, your audience might not and won’t be everyone. You, the more work you make, the more you will find your audience and you can keep growing that audience in an organic way. But to take the pressure off that this has to be for everyone, it’s like what Dan Hurlin said to you.

Go ahead, make that leap and trust your audience, but also trust that the people who need to see it or need to engage with it will connect with it. It might not be for everybody. You stay true to your vision because if you try to be something to all people, it’s just not going to work. Exactly, it will dilute it.

But you talk a little bit in that film about being a mother now and how that’s affecting you as an artist, which was sort of the seeds of, I think, what became the film that you wrote, Another Happy Day, which is about, as you call it, I love this, a postpartum depression comedy, which I just love that right there, but is also that struggle between being an artist and being a mother. And so you are both of those things. I want you to talk a little bit about how do you build a life that fulfills your creativity and also allows you to be a dedicated mother. There was just an article in the New York Times called the Impossible Life of Equal Devotion to Art and Mothering. I’ll send it to you. I’ll send it to you. Thanks. How do you navigate that? There’s a lot of people out there who are like, I can’t do this because I have a child. What do I do? I mean, some of us are dealing with elderly parents now. Some of us are…there’s different phases in our life where we’re dealing with things that can make us veer away from the creative work you want to do. But how do you manage this motherhood artist situation?

Yeah, it’s definitely a theme, a theme in my work. And it’s something I really think about every day. With Dinner Time, it’s interesting because Dinner Time, we shot that film right before I went to Chicago and shot my film, Another Happy Day. However, I had written Another Happy Day or started writing it seven years prior, it had been a long, long, long, long project. So I’ve been working on that project. My daughter is nine. That shows how long I’ve been working on that project. See, I love this because creativity can be the long game. Yes. Like you start with something and then seven years later it turns into what you want it to become. Absolutely. I mean, I had a teacher at one point talk about how it’s really helpful to have projects at different stages of the creative process. So if you, another cooking metaphor, but if you have four burners, one is on a simmer, one is when you’re boiling, they’re all at different stages. And so the film, it’s my first feature film, it was an enormous undertaking from fundraising to stepping into the directorial role, which I hadn’t done for you know, for a feature. You’ve done that in the theater, but you hadn’t done it for a feature film. Exactly, exactly. So it was a lot. I mean, every phase was a new phase for me. And I had to build a lot. I had to build an entire team and also build trust so that people could come aboard a project that was with a first time filmmaker. So that yeah, that was such a long game. And I didn’t know what it would look like at all. So it was helpful during that whole process if you know, if I was hitting walls with the film, something more immediate was happening with the theater. And so, you know, that could be, those offered really nice balances to each other.

But it’s interesting, because with Dinner Time, we developed that movie through improvisation. Laura, as our director, had set the table for us with some character relationships, and we developed the script through improv and the character was very much inspired by Laura’s own personal experience and I love that you talked about being sort of a caregiver or being on at any stage of life. It’s not just mothers, certainly, but it can be a way to open the conversation too. It’s this very clear way of, okay, yes, my attention is divided. My time is not my own. All of those challenges.

(Clip from Dinner Time)

Well, I guess I’ve been noticing that time is going so fast. Like I’m on this speed train and there’s nothing but a blur out the window. There’s so much going on in the world. And I don’t know, I think…reality is just heartbreakingly beautiful. I think part of why we’re maybe drawn to make things, make art or make a flower arrangement is to create that utter presence, to have a shared presence. Perhaps this is why we enjoy and want to create art, something that is so beautiful and not really something that lasts, but just something that – Suspends time. Yes, that slows down time. That slows it down.

So how are you navigating it? It hasn’t been linear. So with the film, the film is in some ways maybe the clearest to talk about. So the film I felt compelled to make. I started writing this in the tiniest windows of time. I had no time where I wasn’t caring for my daughter because when I moved to New Hampshire, there was no childcare that I could find before age three. So I eventually found a friend, a new friend, and we swapped watching each other’s children. So I had two and a half hours a week that was my own. And I chipped away at that script every Friday morning, two and a half hours a week. And it had been marinating in my head for a long time. So it was flowing, but I had to have a lot of patience because I would want to write more,

but I just didn’t have the time. So when more time opened up, I was ready to devote more time to it. And I think because I had so much built up inside me, it was very juicy work time. When my daughter was an infant, I just remember whenever she would nap, I would run through the house to get things done. And that was like the way for a long time, not only running around, cleaning up something, but…

that same energy and spirit when I had time to myself to be creative, it was so special. And I really had so much energy that had been waiting that I tended to use it. And it also, and I also was selective about how I spent that time. It became such a high bar for how I wanted to spend that time. Okay, if I have time to myself, it’s going to be writing. It’s not going to be something that I am sort of ambivalent about. It’s got to be really meaningful. You were really honoring that artist in you. I mean, you could have made the choice of, I have two and a half hours to myself. I’m just going to go get an iced coffee and sit and stare for a while. Yeah, there’s some of that. Yeah, but less so. Yeah. And we do need to do that as artists anyway, to kind of just sit and stare and let things kind of mull around in our head.

But you really prioritized your creative self and there’s a lot to be said for that. That’s why you have finished films now and a Firelight Theatre that’s in its seventh season. It takes a lot and it takes a network of people around you to say, keep doing that. Like you can be a mother and this other thing, but fair play to you for saying, I’m gonna take this energy and put it into this creative work.

And there can be so much self -doubt along the way because, especially when there’s a project that is that long haul and you don’t know what it’s going to look like, you can say to yourself, what is the point? Why? Why? Why am I spending the time here? But I think finding that rhythm, those Friday mornings, OK, this is the time that I write now. Something may really come out that surprises me. Maybe it’ll just be a less productive day but I started to feel like that time was very precious and used it that way.

So one of the things that you did on the set of your movie, which was filmed in Chicago, was you made it a very welcoming place for women and women who were mothers. Tell me how you did that because I know I was listening to an interview that you were in when the film premiered in Vail and the interviewer was saying, you’re starting a movement of how movies can be filmed, what a set can look like. So talk about what was important to you when you set the production up.

Well, the basis of this film, postpartum depression comedy, is the struggle of being a new mother and anything else. So if we’re going to build this project, we better take care of everyone who is a parent or who has caregiving responsibilities.So I knew that it needed to be a budget priority. That is the way that we say something is a priority. We can say, it’s really important to us to have childcare, not unless it’s a line item in the budget. We had to build it into the budget, which meant that we couldn’t afford to do all of the other things. We chose what the priority was. It was childcare, and it was shorter days. That was a huge one.

We shot eight hour days, which is truly – the movement is these eight hour days. That is unheard of in film. I worked very hard in the preparation of the film so that I knew what the plan was every day or a backup plan and that there wasn’t wasted time on set. I didn’t want to feel like our days were rushed, but I wanted there to be an efficiency so that people, we could really make good on the promise that we were going to have these eight hour days.

Child care is part of it and having a reasonable work day is another part of it. And we shot the film in 20 days, which is already pretty short. Standard for an independent film, but it’s not a long time. But when you have eight hour days instead of 10 to 14 hour days, it’s lean. And so we really had everyone’s attention. And what we learned later is that the crew thought, OK, well, that’s nice to want to shoot eight hour days. We’ll see if it happens.

The first day, eight hours. The second day, eight hours. And then people realized, it’s possible. And now in order to keep this all going, we’re all in on it. We’re all on our A game so that we are getting out and getting some rest and coming back in a creative space and in a well -rested space. Whether or not we’re a parent, it was important to us to have a reasonable work environment, a healthy work environment, whether people are parents or not. Everyone can benefit from an eight -hour day instead of a 10 to 14 -hour day. The childcare was the other ingredient.

If you challenge that, but we’ve always done it this way. And if you have just one person say, well, do we have to keep doing it that way? Like, can we maybe? Maybe we can do it another way. Like, let’s just give it a shot and see what happens. It’s a real trailblazing thing to do. And I really hope it takes off because it’s hard to be a creative person and be tired at the same time. Yeah. Everybody sees, it can work. Then everybody will bring their A game because everybody’s vested.

Absolutely. It’s an act of respect. Yes. Yes. You know, your time is worth just as much as everybody else’s time. We all need our rest. We all need to have the opportunity to be creative and collaborative. It was really a high morale set.

Okay, so what’s next for the film? So right now we have a distribution deal which I’m very excited about because it means that it’s going to find its audience and it’s slated to come out this fall. And in the meantime, just process wise, I’m in the stage of gathering up all of the materials that make a film. It’s like all of the pieces, the bones, this file and these audio stems and this contract. And it’s all of these little pieces. And in the independent film world, as the writer, director, producer, I’m assembling those things. It is painstaking work right now, but having something really concrete to look forward to, which is the film finding its audience, is a great carrot to get everything in order.

Okay, so here’s my question that I like to ask all of our guests, which is, what do you need courage for right now?

I really love this question, and I have been thinking about it. I need courage to make my next film because I, at one of the film festivals that I was at with my film, Another Happy Day, I was lamenting with another filmmaker how hard it was to make the film. I loved being in production. I loved our 20 days of filming. That was my jam, you know? I was in my element. But all of the stuff around it, the raising money, the budgeting, the going back and forth, the losing locations, the ups and the downs, the post-production slog was so, so hard and is so much more of the process than those 20 days on set. And so here we are, we’re saying all of these challenges that we faced, including public fails, you know, mortifying things and getting back up again. And it was pretty dire, some of these stories that we were sharing. And I said, so do you want to make another film? And he said, Yeah. And I said, me too. And we have no idea why. I mean, there’s no way to justify it. It is so hard. And yet we do. We want to. Yeah. That’s fantastic.

Nora, we’re just so excited that you were on the show. Thank you, Tricia. You know, I’m just, thank you for bringing what you’re bringing to my community. And thank you for what you’ve brought to everyone in the listening community. So, yeah. likewise. Just cheering you on with your work. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Tricia. Thank you.

I can’t wait to see what Nora’s next film will be and rest assured we’ll keep you posted here on the podcast. In the meantime, here’s a few questions to think about. What constraints do you have in your life and how might they push you to more creative solutions? Are you taking risks and trusting your audience? And in the midst of the busyness of life and all of its pressures, are you committing time for your creative work and honoring that commitment? Remember, Nora chipped away at her screenplay once a week in two and a half hour increments. If we’re patient, it’s amazing what we can achieve if we just follow through on our commitments.

You can learn more about Nora and her work by going to her website, norafiffer.com, and that’s F -I -F -F -E -R. Follow her on Instagram, @norafiffer and make sure to check out the Firelight Theatre Workshop and Nora’s film, Another Happy Day, when it debuts this fall. And pay close attention to the music. Our very own Adam Arnone composed the score. We’ll have all the links in our show notes.

If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s because you care about creativity and courage too. And believe like I do that this is no time to be timid. This year, I’m taking the no time to be timid message on the road and maybe your part of the world needs to hear it. If you’re looking to awaken boldness and creativity in your company or organization, I’d love to come speak to you. Let’s have a conversation. Please reach out to me at booking@triciaroseburt .com.

Join us for our next episode when our guest will be New York Times bestselling author Sy Montgomery and acclaimed writer Howard Mansfield, a dynamic writing couple who’ve been married for 37 years and they’re my neighbors. Literally, they live down the street. As Nora mentioned, this area is teeming with creativity, so I decided to keep going local. And this interview is quite the coup, by the way, as Sy and Howard rarely, if ever, share media appearances. We have a fascinating conversation on my screen porch about how they’ve built and sustained a productive creative life, writing about 40 books between them and counting. You don’t wanna miss this episode. In fact, you don’t wanna miss any episodes. So make sure to subscribe to the show. And if you have any thoughts about the show, we’d love to hear from you. So please reach out at podcast@triciaroseburt.com. Remember, this is no time to be timid.

No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch. And our theme music is Twist and Turns by the Paul Dunlea Group. If you like what you hear, please spread the word, subscribe to the show and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of I Will Be Good Productions.