Director, producer and actor Nora Fiffer of Peterborough spoke about “Making Room for the Audience” during Sunday’s Monadnock Summer Lyceum at Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church.
Moderator Michele Steckler called Fiffer a “Renaissance woman,” as well as “one of the best respected actors in Chicago,” where Fiffer and her family lived before settling in Peterborough.
“Nora is the consummate professional. She is a first-rate talent in every role she embraces. She is passionate, intelligent, curious and savvy. She is multitudes, and she is very funny,” Steckler said.
Fiffer is best known locally as a co-founder, with Jason Lambert, of Peterborough’s Firelight Theatre Workshop. The company, founded in 2017, is starting its eighth season. Fiffer has co-produced over 20 different shows with Firelight.
Fiffer has also written, directed and co-produced a feature length film, “Another Happy Day,” a “postpartum depression comedy” which premiered at Vail Film Festival and is an official selection of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Beverly Hills Film Festival.
The film, which was released in fall 2024, is available by streaming on Prime.
Fiffer began her talk by asking audience members to share their own personal “moments before” they came to be at the lyceum.
“There is always a moment before — before the lights come up, before we walk into the room, before we say hello. We are all coming from somewhere in the first moments of our day, and each moment informs the next,” she said.
Several members of the public obliged, sharing that they had run and an errand or waved at a friend.
“So now, we are all in this scene together,” Fiffer said. “I am up here, and you are the audience, but we are all in together, including the members who just spoke with us. This scene has never happened before — this particular arrangement, and each and every moment that happened before you all got here today, and it will never happen again. Even if it happened again tomorrow, it would all be different.”
Fiffer went on to explain that everyone in the audience was now “scene partners,” sharing the moment and the setting, and went on to share her “given circumstances,” which are facts about a character and the next element needed to create the scene.
“If we are going to be scene partners, we all need be right here, in this moment,” Fiffer said. “Now you all know something about me and what I did this morning before I came here. I had coffee; my family had a dance party. These are my ‘given circumstances.’”
Audience members then shared “given circumstances,” including where they grew up and daily habits.
“We are made up of our given circumstances and moments before. We are also made up of moments of want,” Fiffer said. “A really good scene has opposing objectives, and the characters have things to lose or gain if they don’t get want they want.”
Fiffer added, “I hope that today, you and I don’t have opposing objectives.”
Fiffer then asked audience members to share their own “deepest and most basic needs.”
“Whatever springs to mind first,” she said. “What I want most is to succeed today, I want to open up to you, I want to share my love of filmmaking. I want you to like me, I want you to respect me, I want you to love me. Most days , I want my scene partner to love me. It is my primal want, my most basic want; it is almost always there.”
According to Fiffer, playing roles in the theater and in real life are not so different.
“We slip into character in relationships all day long. We switch our roles and the way we connect with other people all day long; we connect differently to different people because we want different things from different people. We move from scene partner to scene partner, just like you all will today,” Fiffer said.
Fiffer concluded by speaking about her passion for work, including ongoing productions at Firelight Theatre.
“I love film and theater because I fall in love with characters. Bringing fictional characters to life has trained me for appreciating people. Everyone is a character with their own POV, their own circumstance, and many, many moments before,” she said. “I love theater and film and writing and directing and acting, I love the audience, I love taking a script and putting it back together…and I love you. This time together in this frame is kind if like a love story, I wonder what will happen next.”
Music was provided by Volkert Volkertz. The next installment of Monadnock Summer Lyceum will feature Charles Coe with “Poetry for Political and Social Change” Sunday, Aug. 17, at 11 a.m. Steve Schuch will serve as moderator, and Tara Greenblatt Band will provide music.
