biographme
Step Taylor
is a
twenty-four-year-old playwright, poet and novice screenwriter currently
enrolled in the University
of British Columbia’s
Optional Residency Creative Writing
MFA Program. Taylor spent
his
childhood in the village
of Chapel Arm, Newfoundland
but has been based out of Fredericton,
New Brunswick since 1999.
Taylor
was
introduced to theatre in his first year of undergraduate study at St.
Thomas University,
auditioning for a production of Romeo
& Juliet (2004) on a whim only to be cast as Romeo. The
consummate
egotist, he took to the attention and has since performed in over
twenty Fredericton
productions including Far Away (2004),
The Crucible (2005), Our Town (2006),
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (2006), Proof (2006) and Translations
(2007).
In addition to acting in St.
Thomas’
Black Box Theatre, Taylor
quickly
began writing play scripts to workshop and mount in the space. His
original
one-acts Ask Kathy Who’s Pathetic
(2005), Weird and Picky (2006) and I
Unclick (2007) received readings at the annual
“78” public workshop, and he
directed his first full-length play, Sure
They Do, Eugene (2006), as an independent study through the
English
department.
Taylor
won the
Notable Acts Summer Theatre Festival’s “Taking it to the Street”
Playwriting
Contest on three consecutive occasions with The
Father and Floozy Fiasco (2004), Shoes
That Aren’t Red (2005) and Stap My
Vitals (2006) all receiving performances. Taylor’s
first full-length professional production, Chapel
Arm, was also staged by the company in the Black Box Theatre,
August 2008.
He is currently developing a new play, Fuzzy
Waters, the story of a cell phone sales consultant who
considers becoming a serial killer, which he will direct as part of
Theatre St. Thomas' summer season. His other projects include an
ever
fattening poetry manuscript and God’s
Wrestlers Forever, a screenplay that documents the transformation
of a
backyard wrestling league into a full-blown religious movement.
Taylor
is a
proud member of the Vagabond Trust, a relaxed and realistic New
Brunswick-rooted writer’s group. Over the last
year the clan
has voyaged to rural Newfoundland
on a travel-writing experiment, opened a new Trust chapter in Toronto,
added numerous publishing credits to its communal feathered cap, and
consumed
more beer than the city of Munich. The members meet biweekly at the
Picaroons
Brewery for literary critiques and barley-powered gut expansion.
Publications
2009
"Little cliff villages make you smoke cigarettes,"
poem in QWERTY: Winter 2009
"Dark dark key," short story in Nonymous Quarterly
"Chapel Arm," full-length play by Scirocco Drama
