A gift for writing
Published Saturday July 19th, 2008
It's fair to say that John Spurway is a logical guy. He has a science background, a head for finances and a talent for business writing.
That gift with words, however, reveals a creative side to the local man that he has come to express in some unique ways you might not expect.
His day job is as the company controller for Atlantic Hydrogen, handling an array of financial work, including payroll, accounting and purchasing.
"That has become almost a full-time thing, but I started out as a writer."
Like many of his co-workers, Spurway was an independent contractor when he started there, happily working from home.
That changed as the company grew, but he still writes for the website and does other corporate literature when he has time.
When he's not doing office work, he's been diligently working on another project. Spurway is a playwright and he's about to take that passion to the next level.
His play, Between Friends, is currently in rehearsals at the Lighthouse Festival Theatre in Port Dover, Ont. Previews begin July 29, with opening night on Thursday, July 31.
To say that Spurway is excited about this would be an understatement.
"I'm just beside myself, I'm just thrilled," he admits during a recent interview. "It doesn't even feel real."
That's understandable, considering he made time for the interview the day before he drove to Ontario, where he will spend three weeks in rehearsals for Between Friends.
How he got to this point, he says, requires a bit of explaining.
"Probably what I've got to do is back up to 1999 when I decided, at the urging of an old colleague of mine, to get into the writing business."
At that time, he says, he'd had a couple of things published in The Telegraph-Journal.
Spurway joined forces with Lane MacIntosh and they started The Word Company.
"We just wrote and did communications projects."
Though Spurway's background is in science, and he has a degree in biology, he had done some writing with the university, helping researchers write funding proposals.
"It gets a little checkered here," he admits.
Following graduation, he worked with a welding supply place for almost 15 years.
"It was in business management and sales. That's where I learned my bookkeeping and accounting work," he says. "The I bounced around a little bit and then in 1999, Lane and I forged ahead with this writing company."
Writing is something he always enjoyed doing, he says. It came easily for him.
"When the Atlantic Hydrogen thing came along, they wanted some help with a funding proposal," he says. "From there it was 'stay on because we're going to need a lot of writing expertise with the things we do.'"
When he began, he was working 10 to 15 hours a week from home with Atlantic Hydrogen, but now he has his own office and a hard time keeping up with both the writing and the financial work for the company.
"That's what I do here. I work with words and numbers, so I get to use both sides of my brain."
Spurway's play writing career can also be traced back to the late ' 90s.
"I took a creative writing course in 1999 at UNB and they run you through all these different things, like emotions and colours," he says. "One of them was an exercise on dialogue."
He discovered he really enjoyed telling a story through dialogue and after the course was over, he kept working on it.
"It wasn't this play, it was another one, and I submitted that to TNB for Brave New Words and had a reading."
He did some workshops and wrote what he calls 'a couple more warmup plays' before tackling Between Friends.
"This play was the one I said if I ever get anything produced, it will be this one."
Between Friends is a comedy about friendships and how they change, he explains.
"This has actually had quite a bit of attention from an early stage standpoint."
For example, he had a public reading of the play in Hamilton, Ontario, he says, and Chris McHarge, the artistic director with the Lighthouse Festival Theatre in Port Dover, sat in on it.
"He liked it and saw some promise in it and I've been working with him since."
Spurway was told if he was willing to workshop the play in Port Dover in February, McHarge would be willing to add it to the theatre's summer lineup.
"It's hard to get noticed in this business. And I'm my own promoter, my own agent, my own bookkeeper and accountant," says Spurway.
"When Chris said that he was prepared to invest some in it because he saw some promise, I was thrilled."
Spurway says that one of the things he had going for him when he decided to try his hand at this was a friend in the business.
"Norm Foster and I have been friends for a long time."
Foster has read through his work and offered plenty of tips along the way and the encouragement to keep at it when he needed it.
"I had completely stopped doing this twice. You can only go back so many times," says Spurway, but then one thing would lead to another and he'd suddenly find himself working on it again.
"I couldn't not do it."
About a year and a half ago, however, he truly wondered if he should just let it go.
"I'd write something. Maybe I should be writing on novels or short stories, because I love to write."
Foster gave it some thought and told him to stick with the play. It turned out to be good advice.
A year after that public reading in Hamilton, Spurway sat down with McHarge and Ron Gabriel, who will be directing the play.
"They've both been terrific. I have learned more about playwriting since meeting with them in October than I knew going in."
He expects to learn even more during rehearsals, when he will sit and listen for what doesn't work. The show has been cast, so he doesn't expect there will be major changes at this point.
"It opens for previews on Tuesday, July 29, opening night is Thursday, July 31, and it actually runs for three full weeks," he says. "And the theatre has the capacity of 350."
That means "a pile of people," which he calculates could be in the range of 8,000 people, will invest in an evening and see his play and, hopefully, laugh in all the right places.
Thankfully he'll have lots of moral support on opening night.
"I'm really lucky. My family is going to be there. My brother from Halifax (Peter Spurway) and his wife, my sister from Fredericton (Pam Spurway), my other sister from Ottawa (Anne Spurway-Ba), they're all going to converge," he says, noting his wife and son will be there as well. "The place will be lousy with Spurways."
Spurway is happily married to Margot Daley-Spurway, who owns Daley's Countrywide Furniture.
The couple have been married for almost 30 years.
"We met on the volleyball court. We were both volleyball players. She's still playing."
Spurway says he's lucky that Margot took it so well when he told her he wanted to write for a living.
The company did have a contract when they started out, so there was some stability, he says, but they were still taking a chance.
"There were some lean months, but she hung in there and was really supportive."
And now that his play is being produced, he says, she's even more thrilled than he is.
"She's a doll. She's good-looking, she's smart and she's probably one of the few people on the planet that gets me. I sometimes don't get myself. I'm a lucky guy."
The couple have two children. Andrew, 21, is about to begin his fourth year at St. Thomas University, while Laura, 23, is going into her final year of law school at Dalhousie University.
He hopes that they've taught their children, "if nothing else, to follow your interests and to do what you like to do."
Spurway has done that. He says he enjoys the solitude of writing, often getting up around 5 a.m. to write before heading to the office.
He has another play ready that McHarge wants to talk to him about while he's in Ontario, plus another that's half-finished.
He would love to do something at Theatre New Brunswick eventually.
"I have spoken to Leigh Rivenbark (TNB's artistic producer) and have met him a few times and he's been really enthusiastic. ... I'm on his radar and I would be thrilled to have something produced in Fredericton."
Spurway grew up in the city and, despite opportunities, he's never wanted to live elsewhere.
When he does have some free time, he enjoys golfing.
"I love to play golf and I'll play both days on the weekend," he says.
His priorities have always been family and friends, he says, and to work at what makes him happy.
He's found a great company in Atlantic Hydrogen, he notes, and a lot of great people.
"It helps that I have an understanding employer. To take three weeks off ... Not only did (the company president) say it was OK, he said it was absolutely crucial that I do this," he says.
And, Spurway admits, he's really excited to see this play on its feet.
Between Friends is only the beginning, as this playwright is always getting new ideas.
"I like to laugh and to be entertained and the stuff I write is the stuff I like."
What's amazing is that Spurway hasn't been doing this his whole life, as his mother, Joan Spurway, was involved in local theatre and co-founded Theatre Fredericton. That's where Norm Foster got his start.
"Yet I never considered getting involved until I took that course."
His mother died in 2003, he says, adding, "She would have loved to have seen this. When she was sick in the hospital, I used to take her two or three pages of script each day and she said it was the highlight of her day."
His father, Bob Spurway, died in 1994.
"He taught at the Ranger School for like four million years. Anyone who ever went through the Ranger School recognizes that name."
Spurway doesn't see the point in having regrets. After all, things have turned out fantastic, he says.
Life has taught him to go with the flow and to make your own breaks.
"You need to recognize an opportunity to try something and take the leap."
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