Pressure
90 minutes | 3 actors
Grace has been treading the murky waters of depression for a long time. Despite the support of her mother, (ex) partner, and therapist, she remains caught in the whirlpool of her own negative thought patterns, unable to break free. Grace inevitably drifts further and further into the depths of her psyche, where it becomes impossible to tell what is real or imagined.
In a non-chronological structure, the play traces formative moments in Grace’s life as she struggles to be “okay.” An aspiring playwright, she finds herself unable to write anything but daily horoscopes, each one reflecting the awful thoughts she directs at herself.
Grace’s world narrows as she pushes away the people who love her most, drowning in a single, persistent question: “what’s the point?”
Production / Development History
& Accolades
Production /
Development History
2023 — Award: Best Scene at The Great Canadian Playwright Showcase (Grande Prairie, AB)
2022 — Production: 2022 Edmonton Fringe Festival, self-produced & presented by Nextfest (Edmonton, AB)
Director: Emma Ryan
Director & Dramaturg: Autumn Strom
Stage Manager: Charlotte Braid
Set, Props, & Sound Designer: Anthony Hunchak
Lighting & Projection Designer: Jadyn Buchanan
Assistant Lighting & Projection Designer: Andraya Diogo
Grace: Sydney Williams
Ricky: Meegan Sweet
Angie: Sue Huff
2022 — Reading: Nextfest (Edmonton, AB)
Director: Hayley Moorhouse
Grace: Sydney Williams
Ricky: Meegan Sweet
Angie: Kate Ryan
2022 — Excerpt Reading: Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre, Springboards New Play Festival (Edmonton, AB)
Director: Amy DeFelice
Grace: Sydney Williams
Ricky: Meegan Sweet
Angie: Melissa Thingelstad
2020 — Honourable Mention: Fire Exit Theatre’s Scripts on Fire New Play Competition (Calgary, AB)
2020 — Runner-up, Best Unproduced Script: SkirtsAfire Festival’s Peep Show!, a tease of new plays; received half-day development workshop (Edmonton, AB)
Press
“Depression is tricky because there’s no clear-cut cause or cures, but there are tell-tale signs and Pressure mined many of them.”
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ — Edmonton Journal, Fringe Review
“Pressure, a new and convincingly tough-minded play by the up-and-comer Amanda Samuelson, premiering at the Fringe as Nextfest’s first official cross-festival foray, looks for a theatrical way to explore depression. And the spikiest of the insights it sets forth might well be that the loving concern of everyone around Grace (Sydney Williams) — her stellar mom (Sue Huff), her patient partner and soon-to-be ex Ricky (Meegan Sweet) — who do everything right and are standing by, hands outstretched, are pressure too.” — Liz Nicholls: 12th Night, Fringe Review
“It’s the best new drama I’ve seen this Fringe…It was refreshing to see the mother-daughter interactions being so nuanced, without the mother being a caricature of misunderstanding or a villain – her support was more than tuna noodle casseroles, and it was satisfying to see Grace managing to reach out to her mother for help.” — Ephemeral Pleasures, Fringe Review
“Amanda Samuelson remembers the moment Pressure began to build. Her play, which gets a workshop reading at Nextfest Saturday and then becomes Nextfest’s first-ever official Fringe show in August, began in the winter of 2018. In a playwriting course at NYU, where Samuelson went to school (and got her BFA), the pressurized assignment was “to incorporate three ingredients into a two-page scene…. Hunger, astrology, a synthetic body part.” What could be more playful, or more impossibly daunting?” — Liz Nicholls: 12th Night, Nextfest Interview
Pressure at the 2022 Edmonton International Fringe Festival: Interview with Global News
Pressure Production Photos & Audience Reactions
Photos by Harrison Huber