Item #12 on My Five-Year plan is to put on The Lost Years in Montreal. The Lost Years is a play I wrote telling the story of Deb’s and my journey through parenthood.

Deb and I performed it at the Hamilton Fringe in 2017. And we’ve been meaning to remount it ever since.

We played around with the idea of filming it and sharing it with family and friends online. During the pandemic.

But with Netflix and doom-scrolling, we never got around to learning our lines again. And then life got back to normal, and we were in other shows again.

I applied to the Montreal Fringe lottery for this year’s Fringe. To put on The Lost Years.

We didn’t get in. So, we made other plans.

And wouldn’t you know it?

Someone dropped out and last week we were offered a spot! But by that time, we had already made other commitments for the same time period.

Wah!

The plan is to submit it to Montreal Fringe lottery again in the Fall. Fingers crossed this time. We might even submit it to another Fringe festival.

And I will do a rewrite, as requested by Deb. It will be my summer project.

As part of my research for the rewrite, I’m going to read my journals. It should be interesting.

This project is far away enough that I could get complacent. I plan to start reading my journals at the beginning of March. And I aim to read 2 years worth per week. Some years don’t have many entries, so it should average out.

And that should take me until the end of June. I can work on the rewrites during July and August.

Then we apply to Fringe Lottery (lotteries?) and wait.

If all goes well, the summer of 2025 should be The Lost Summer!