A Deep Dive into Directing: Nic Lindegger Talks ‘Robin and Magpie’
In the week leading up to the winter solstice, I sat down with a handful of local theatre-makers to reflect on the year, learn about people’s upcoming projects, and find out what was keeping them warm through the short, dark days of December. This interview with Nic Lindegger is the fourth in a series which will appear on the Kingston Theatre Alliance’s Performance Blog in the early months of 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Nic Lindegger is ready to leave the nest.
After working as Evalyn Parry’s assistant director on two shows in 2024—first Erin Shields’ Paradise Lost for the DAN School Drama Major, then the independent debut of Sophia Fabiilli’s Why It’s imPossible—Lindegger is spreading their wings as a solo director. When we spoke in December, they had just signed on to direct Victoria Marmulak’s new comedy, Robin and Magpie, which plays this weekend at Theological Hall.
The third-year Drama student has enjoyed taking a deep dive into assistant directing in the past year. “Being able to work with Evalyn while they were finishing their Master’s at Queen’s was super awesome—they’re amazing to work with, and they have a lot of experience working on these shows, especially from a queer lens, which I really enjoyed. Finding a queer theatre scene in Kingston really resonated with me.”
While assistant directing Why It’s imPossible, Lindegger also had a rare opportunity to influence the development of a new script. “Sophia was welcoming discussions with members of the creative team, so we were asking some of the same questions [as Paradise Lost], but we were trying to solve some of them in the text, and not just up on our feet. I didn’t have any formal dramaturgy experience going in, and it was lots of fun to give input in the rehearsal room that helped shape the piece in its development.”
By contrast, their work on Paradise Lost had involved more emphasis on design and staging. “Paradise Lost was a fully-developed script. We were doing that same text analysis, but we weren’t asking ourselves if we should cut a line, or if we could make this clearer by adding in more knowledge on Satan’s relationship with Eve. It was much more focused on understanding the script and then figuring everything else out, answering all of those questions on our feet in how we stage it, and in the lighting and costuming.”
After managing 18 actors, a massive set, and about a million props for Paradise Lost, working with a bare set and just one actor on Why It’s imPossible felt far less hectic. In other ways, though, it was more challenging. “We had to adapt our understanding of the physical space on stage and around [actor Zoë Sweet], and how she would use it to create tension with the different characters that she was playing—how we could [get the audience to] visually see this cottage that actually wasn’t there.”
Lindegger’s solo directing debut will be in a sweet spot—it’s a two-hander, starring fellow DAN School students Kate Megginson and Alina Siwy. Robin and Magpie is a feminist comedy that follows a pair of women—both mothers of sons—as they challenge each other and uncover some deep-seated feelings about motherhood. “It was written originally out of a kind of resentment, but it ended up turning into a love letter to these mums. They’re ‘boy moms’, and the show is working through their role as mothers in a patriarchal structure, and their responsibility for how their sons behave. Their identities and selves have been attached to their sons for the past 18, 20 years of their lives. The show is about them finding comfort in each other and getting to break down some walls that they’ve built up over their time as being mothers to these boys—to these men.”
Intentionally or not, motherhood seems to be a theme in the projects Lindegger has taken on lately—Why It’s imPossible also follows a mum who is contending with parenting in precarious times. “I’m looking at these shows and exploring these characters and relationships through the child’s lens. Especially for Robin and Magpie, it’s supposed to be what we expect motherhood to be like, or what we see it being. It’s not necessarily supposed to be a true reflection of one mother’s experience—both Victoria and I are not parents. This is our, or her as the playwright’s, belief and idea of what it would look like, and what it might be like or feel like. It’s interesting as well to explore this role of mother from a younger child’s perspective.
“It’s also a small, intimate show, which is really awesome to work on, and I’m excited to take that on as my first kind of solo directing experience, just getting to work with two actors and really focus on the tension and relationship between them and holding it there. Seeing how they’re interwoven, the two mothers, will be interesting.”
With a blink-and-you-miss-it two-night run, Robin and Magpie is a small flash in the pan, but 2025 is looking to be a busy year for Lindegger. Next up, they’ll be working on the Vogue Charity Fashion Show, which they’ve been involved with since first year. “It is an [Alma Mater Society] club at Queen’s, but we perform each year at the Kingston Grand Theatre on their big stage, and we always sell out. It’s very much integrated into the Kingston community—it’s all these different artistic areas like dance and music and design coming together to create something really awesome.”
Nic Lindegger is currently a third-year Drama student at Queen’s University. With a personal focus on directing, they assistant directed the show ‘Why It’s imPossible’, which ran in September at Kingston’s Baby Grand and at Ottawa’s Great Canadian Theatre Company in January.
‘Robin and Magpie’ plays at Theological Hall (second floor) at 7:30pm on February 7th and 8th, with tickets available at the door. More information can be found here.
