TSIIGEHTCHIC/ARCTIC RED RIVER - After more than 15 years acting, writing and directing in Vancouver, Jamie Norris was looking for some peace and quiet. He found it in Tsiigehtchic, where he's been the community wellness worker for the past two and a half years.

Jamie Norris, the Tsiigehtchic community wellness worker, is also a commissioned playwright. - photo courtesy of Curtis Groom

After work, the award-winning playwright spends his time writing scripts on commission for Green Thumb Theatre, a Vancouver-based theatre company that performs worldwide.

"One of the things that has attracted me to the North is the lack of big city distractions," he said. "I wanted time to do work that was meaningful for me and to be able to have time to write. So that's kind of where I ended up."

So far he's written six plays for the company, and though he has yet to write one set in the North, Norris said he became interested in living here while directing plays in the Yukon. He was in Dawson City from April to September 2005 directing a musical when he realized how much he liked the North.

After that musical wrapped up Norris said he decided he wanted to do something different for a while. "So that January I went back into a professional counsellor training program and did that program knowing that when I completed it, I wanted to work in the North," he said. He's also writing scripts based on his own ideas, including a play he's been working on called The Samaritan, which explores elements of humanity that have always interested him.

"One of the things I've always been interested in is the ways people find to help each other, and I don't want that to sound like oh, angelic, because sometimes people find, you know, very devious ways where it may seem like they're helping other people but they're only helping themselves. So when I hear stories about that, those inspire me," he said.

He's currently working on a play called 500 Words to be performed in Vancouver-area schools.

"It's basically about the combination of literacy and imagination and sort of trying to bring those two worlds together."

When he's not writing or working as a community counsellor, Norris tries to share his theatre skills with the community. He's led a few after school theatre classes for local kids and two summers ago he directed a playground production of How the Raven Lost its Beak, based on a traditional Gwich'in legend.

"There's talk, if all the right people are in the same room again, that we might try and maybe present it down in Inuvik at the arts festival or something, so that’s sort of something that looms."

Playwriting is challenging but satisfying, he says.

"Whenever I'm writing a play, and especially when there's a commission and a deadline, sometimes it's really hard and really challenging and at the same time it's a challenge that demands so much of me," Norris said. "My favourite thing, at least right now, is to create plays, to create the worlds that these characters can inhabit."