& Other Concerns is a short film about a restless 30+ woman grappling with life’s big choices who enlists her three oddly unhelpful friends to free herself from a surreal escape room.

& Other Concerns actually began life as a play “An Atlas, A Necktie & Other Concerns” (created and directed by Lauren Greenwood) and debuted at the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival, winning Best of Fringe 519! It was also a finalist for the 2019 Cayle Chernin Awards. It starred Blythe Haynes, Chantel Winters, Myrthin Stagg and Yvonne Addai…who all became best friends.

On the surface, & Other Concerns is a story about four 30+ women who must break out of an impossible-to-crack escape room. But it’s actually an exploration of the universality of feeling trapped by life’s circumstances and what we all need to do to feel free. These are the stories that beguile us.

Since then this female-led team has adapted the play into a short film and filmed it over five days this past June, supported by a Canada Council of the Arts grant. Now titled & Other Concerns (and directed by Sabina Lambert), the project is in post-production! This ‘life after Fringe’ project is currently crowdfunding to finish and go onto another festival…the film festival circuit! We are very proud of our roots as a play at the Toronto Fringe - truly the opportunity that brought us together and gave this project life.

This is a success story in so many ways for us - and for art living beyond the Fringe Festival. To finish the project, we need to raise funds for post-production - and we launched our campaign on Monday!

Check us out at our campaign page: seedandspark.com.

and follow us on instagram: www.instagram.com.

Photo: Myrthin Stagg, Yvonne Addai, Blythe Haynes and Chantel Winters. © 2019 Sabina Lambert.