-July-August 2002: Nosebleed. The first project for She Said Yes! was two-fold: a two-week workshop with clown teacher/director, Sue Morrison (ON), and a subsequent workshopping and performance of Sara Tilley’s first solo clown show, Nosebleed. The workshop was held in conjunction with Resource Centre for the Arts’ Festival 5 workshop series, July 15-26 2002 and was based both in Pochinko and Gaulier technique. Sara and director Pat Dempsey then took their new skills and applied them to the creation of Nosebleed, a full-length, solo clown show. Nosebleed played August 22-25, 2002, Masonic Temple, St. John’s, and was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, and the City of St. John’s.

-January 2003: The Ultimate Actor’s Nightmare. The first She Said Yes! fundraiser event, held at the Resource Centre for the Arts, LSPU Hall, featuring the gracious pro bono work of seventeen professional actors who were cast randomly and then staged eight classic theatre scenes with no rehearsal time whatsoever.

-February 2003: The Jailer’s Daughter and Other Mad Fools Cracking Their Livers to Pieces for Love. A text-collage solo show based around the theme of love addiction and several pieces from Shakespeare’s Two Noble Kinsmen, as well as texts written over the period of a year by Sara Tilley as JD, a fictional persona created through an online, interactive diary. The play was performed by Tilley and created with John Hirsch prize-winning director Danielle Irvine. A co-production with RCA Theatre Company through its Significant Other Series program. Supported by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.

-February 2003: Feature on Nervous Vag aired on ZedTV, CBC. Nervous Vag (Sara Tilley) is a stripping clown/performance artist, who graces the bars of St. John’s with sporadic performances. She is occassionally seen at charity and burlesque events, including fundraisers for the Tommy Sexton Foundation, Neighborhood Dance Works, Eastern Edge Gallery and the Resource Centre for the Arts, as well as guest hosting CABARADIO in Vancouver BC. Guest clown partners have included Craig Francis Power, Sean Panting, Phil Churchill and Pat Dempsey.

-February 2004: The Ultimate Actor’s Nightmare II. The popular fundraiser for She Said Yes! returned to the LSPU Hall. Nearly twenty local actors brought eight classic theatre scenes to life, without rehearsal!

-February – March 2004: Top Girls. Written by Caryl Churchill, directed by Charlie Tomlinson, co-produced with Redwatch Theatre in celebration of International Women’s Day at the LSPU Hall. Featuring Didi Gillard-Rowlings, Sherry White, Nicole Rousseau, Leah Lewis, Renee Hackett, Sara Tilley and Geraldine Hollett. A portion of the proceeds raised went towards the local women’s shelter, Iris Kirby House.

-March 2004: Nosebleed (a clown show for adults). Directed by Pat Dempsey and featuring Sara Tilley. Remounted at the Masonic Temple in St. John’s, after extensive workshopping and rewriting of the piece, leading to its ‘final form’.

-June 2004: Grand Central Station. A three-day workshop examining a new piece based on texts by Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, adapted for the stage by Sara Tilley. Featuring Sean Panting, Sherry White and Ruth Lawrence, directed by Sara Tilley, with Diana Daly as composer. Viewpoints and Butoh practice were used to take the heightened and poetic text and find its place on a heightened and poetic stage, including the beginnings of an original score created by Daly on piano and manual typewriter, and original choreography created by the group. Supported by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.

-May – June, 2005: Sara and She Said Yes! Associate Artist Craig Francis Power participated in an month-long Clown Through Mask intensive led by Ian Wallace, co-creator of the Pochinko clown technique. This intensive course covered the method of Pochinko clown-through-mask technique, as well as studies in kinetics and neutral mask.

-November 26, 2005: The Ultimate Actor’s Nightmare III: Pinter’s Revenge. In a new twist on the Nightmare, fifteen actors were divided into relay teams and performed the entire playThe Lover without rehearsal.

-February-March, 2006 – Sara participated in RCA Theatre’s developmental Write On! Workshop, facilitated by Berni Stapleton. This two week intensive playwriting workshop allowed Sara to refine the writing of the upcoming She Said Yes! project, The (In)complete Herstory of Women in Newfoundland and (Labrador!)

-April 2006 – LULU. Adapted by Sara Tilley from the original plays by Frank Wedekind, directed by Sara Tilley. Featuring Chuck Herriott, Brad Hodder, Ruth Lawrence, Steve Lush, Sean Panting, Kira Sheppard and Mark White. The rehearsal process included neutral and Pochinko-based mask work as well as animal work, Laban and butoh theatre practice, mixed with traditional theatre practice. Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the City of St. John’s. A co-production with White Rooster Theatre.

-June-August, 2006 – Butler’s Marsh. Written by Robert Chafe, directed by Danielle Irvine, featuring Sara Tilley and Mark O’Brien. This production of Chafe’s disturbing Governor-General’s Award-nominated script was the company’s first outdoor environmental theatre project. Staged in the woods of Pippy Park, in the dark, the production’s unrelenting realism was, in the words of reviewer Gordon Jones, “intimate and intense, such that, when it ended, the opening night audience seemed not quite to know how to respond to what had been witnessed – not contained and framed as in a theatre, but discomfitingly close and naked amongst the trees, starkly and eerily illuminated only by flashlights wielded by the two actors.” Supported by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the City of St. John’s.

-July, 2006 – The (In)complete Herstory of Women in Newfoundland (and Labrador!). Part of the On the Verge Festival produced by the National Arts Centre and the Magnetic North Theatre Festival 2006. The script was workshopped for three days with director Leah Cherniak (ON), actors Martha Ross (ON), Mary Lynne Bernard (NL), Susan Kent (NL), Amy House (NL) and Anthony Black (NS), and with the support of dramaturge Paula Danckert (QC), culminating in a public reading on July 5^th, 2006.

-July 2006 – Nosebleed. A one-night-only performance as part of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival’s Fridge Festival of Newfoundland Theatre. This special half-hour version of Nosebleed was performed by Sara Tilley with Craig Francis Power as Garcon.

-August 2006 – Weiner Shaman. Sara performed a clown exploration lasting three hours during Eastern Edge Gallery’s Express ’06: A Celebration of Art in 24 Hours, an annual marathon of artmaking in St. John’s. Sara installed herself in the parking lot of Eastern Edge Gallery, dressed as an elderly male shaman, with a Coleman stove, cardboard sign, and a large pot full of boiling soy wieners. She squatted in the parking lot space and offered to tell fortunes by augury of the boiling wieners, also to cure ailments with weiner application, (vegan) cold cut talismans, and meatball charms.

-February 2007 – She Said Yes! Artistic Director Sara Tilley was awarded the Rhonda Payne Memorial Theatre Award for women in Newfoundland theatre for her work in 2006.

-March 2007 – Women’s Work: A Festival of Women’s Theatre, co-produced by White Rooster Productions and RCA Theatre Company, a celebration of International Women’s Week, and of theatre written by and for women. The festival featured three nights of staged readings of new scripts by female playwrights, following day-long dramaturgy sessions with professional actors. A secondary aim of the festival is to raise money for local women’s shelter, the Naomi Centre.

Plays dramaturged and presented in 2007:

Sex, the war of by Lois Brown

Family, or, 63 Steps by Agnes Walsh

Connecting Rooms by Florence Button

The (In)complete Herstory of Women in Newfoundland (and Labrador!) by Sara Tilley

Dramaturgy by Sherry White, Sara Tilley and Lois Brown

Featuring Kay Anonsen, Mary-Lynn Bernard, Robert Chafe, Sandy Gow, Brad Hodder, Amy House, Ruth Lawrence, Sara Tilley and Sherry White

-June-August 2007 – Butler’s Marsh. A remount of the 2007 production of Robert Chafe’s very well-received chiller, set in the woods of Pippy Park.

-November 2007 – Sara Tilley is invited to the Labrador Creative Arts Festival as a guest artist. In one week, she taught about 600 people, ages 5 – 65, the basics of red-nose clown.

-November 2007-July 2008 – First annual Mail-Order Dramaturgy program which pairs three playwrights with long-distance dramaturges. Pairings were Michelle Butler Hallett (NL) with dramaturge Sara Tilley (NL), Nicole Stamp (ON) with dramaturge Lois Brown (NL) and Andrea Rideout (AB) with dramaturge Emma Tibaldo (QC). This program was produced with assistance from Playwright’s Workshop Montreal.

-January-July 2008 – Sara traveled to Vancouver to do a one-on-one mentorship with Ian Wallace in order to teach Pochinko Clown Through Mask Technique and Neutral Mask.

-November-August 2008/2009 – 2nd annual Mail Order Dramaturgy program which pairs 3 playwrights with long-distance dramaturges. This year’s pairs were Amanda Jernigan (NL/NB) with dramaturge Berni Stapleton (NL), Liesl Lafferty (BC) with dramaturge Lois Brown (NL), and Sheilah Roberts (NL) with dramaturge Sara Tilley (NL).

-January 2009 – One-day workshop in Neutral Mask by Sara Tilley, Reid Theatre, St. John’s.

-March 8-11, 2009 – Women’s Work Festival in co-production with RCA Theatre and White Rooster Theatre, Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s. This year’s festival featured MONARITA by Shannon Bramer, dramaturgy Robert Chafe, Kill Zone by Wanda Graham, dramaturgy Anne Chislett, Sweets by Amy Anthony, dramaturgy Sara Tilley, Bare Ruint Choirs by Michelle Butler Hallett, dramaturgy Amy House and Tree by Lois Brown, dramaturgy Mark Bath.

-March 24-29, 2009 – The (In)complete Herstory of Women in Newfoundland (and Labrador!), co-produced by RCA Theatre and She Said Yes!, written by Sara Tilley, co-directed by Lois Brown and Sara Tilley, with Susan Kent, Ruth Lawrence, Sara Tilley, Craig Francis Power and Lois Brown. The Majestic, St. John’s. Voted the Best Theatre Production of 2009 by the Scope’s Best of St. John’s Reader’s Survey.

-April – June 2009 – ten-week Clown Through Mask course with Sara Tilley, Reid Theatre, St. John’s.