Always a performer
Emily Schooley is at home on stage
Somewhere in a notebook in Emily Schooley’s home sits a script, the first script she wrote.
It was written for her cat. And on those pages, her cat was turned into a superhero.
Somewhere else in her home sits a journal with an entry she made back in Grade 2 at Ross Elementary School in Welland. It talks about how her family was going to help her shoot movies, with details on who would do what.
When she was four or five years old, the Port Colborne native used to make her aunts and uncles watch her plays in the backyard with Barbies and My Little Pony as the stars.
“Looking back now, I think I always wanted to be a performer, but I was trying to fit into a box,” said Schooley, current starring in “Heatwave“at the Hamilton Fringe Festival.
When she attended Port Colborne High School, Schooley thought she would eventually end up in veterinary medicine. She said performing was secondary to what she thought her goal in life should be.
Coming down with mono put her behind in high school and she had to spend time catching up on such things as math. While taking the needed catch-up courses. Schooley performed in a play at the high school.
Things weren’t going well for her though.
“I was failing calculus and feeling kind of miserable. I said, ‘Screw this, I’m going to go for acting instead.’”
She first went to theatre school at University of Windsor. She ended up finishing her degree at University of Waterloo.
“It had a great theatre training program,” she said of Waterloo, from which she graduated in 2007.
She moved to Toronto in 2010 then got serious about acting. Since then she’s worked in theatre and film, more recently as a director and producer.
With “Heatwave” — written and directed by Erika Reesor and which runs until Sunday — Schooley takes on the role as one half of a lesbian couple in their mid-30s.
“I discover my partner wants to transition to a man, but she hasn’t told me,” she said, adding it makes her character question her own identity.
Thrown into the mix is a visit from her partner’s mother, which ramps up the tension in the play that takes place over the course of an evening.
“One of the things I really love about the show is that it was created by all women. It shows that not everyone is perfect, and it takes time for my character to come around.”
She said it shows people can grow and change for the better.
While performing in “Heatwave,” Schooley is putting the finishing touches on her one-woman show “Caged.” That show will run Aug. 2 to 5 at The Island Fringe Festival in Prince Edward Island.
“It’s written as a woman who ends up in solitary confinement in jail … how she ended up there and why,” she said of the show, which will take place in a yoga studio set up to look like a jail cell.
The story, she said, is based on events in her own life when she was wrongfully arrested for reporting an ex-boyfriend abused her.
For more on Schooley and her work, visit her website at emilyschooley.com.