The busy first day hubbub of the Muskoka Festival’s annual Music Theatre Writers’ Colony. As an actress, I will be assigned to two different projects which we will rehearse all week and then present as staged readings with music for an invited audience. None of this is really new to me – this is my fourth season at Muskoka Festival. I know that this will be a busy, hectic, challenging, frustrating and rewarding week. After the usual early morning meet-and-greet with coffee and doughnuts and a welcome from artistic director Michael Ayoub and Colony co-ordinator Patrick Young, my first stop is rehearsal for my main project assignment – a new musical called Fireweeds by a writer I have not met – Cathy Elliott. We have been exiled to a basement room known as the “Grotto” with a tinny sounding electronic keyboard and the ever-present humming of the huge air conditioning units that service the theatre upstairs. No one is very happy about this – least of all our musical director Stephen Woodjetts. Along with director Patrick Young, veteran music theatre performer Diane Stapley and Muskoka Young Company member Robin Zionce, we await the arrival of our playwright / lyricist / composer. I don’t really remember her arrival – just that suddenly she is there – tiny and quiet – with a huge grin flashing out from behind masses of reddish curls. She seems nervous and shy – almost apologetic – until she sits down at the piano to play us some of her music. Her soft chameleon-hazel eyes sparkle alive; her small hands powerfully attack the keys; and the cool musty underground air of our basement room is filled with one of the warmest, richest, and most compelling voices I have ever heard. We read through the rough sketch outline of a half-hour first draft version of Fireweeds, stopping for Cathy to sing song after song. At the end of it all I find myself wanting it to go on and on. I can’t stand for the voice to end – the voice of her songs, the voice of her words, the voice of the soul of this unearthly little being that can reach right down into your heart and take hold and not let go.