We had our first read-through yesterday for And Bella Sang With Us at Sarah Rodgers' home. I haven't done a Fringe for a decade... but working with Sarah, one of Vancouver's most in-demand directors, on re-imagining a Sally Stubbs play that explores the fraught and forgotten history of Canada's first policewomen? How could I resist?

Maybe things are different here in Vancouver, but in my experience, it's not a typical first reading of a Fringe show when you have senior professionals – Barbara Clayden, Brian Ball – giving design presentations. First readings are always heady times, though, aren't they: full of possibility and enthusiasm; long before the realities of deadlines and budgets and our own limitations set in. And that's especially true when everyone there is doing it for love.

The cast crackles through the first read: I look forward to being in the room together. And I am very excited about fighting again. It's been years since I got to do some quality stage violence, and fight director Derek Metz is going to work with me to help blow the rust off. I've always learned choreography very very slowly, and I'm not able to really go after another actor until I'm pretty sure that (a) I know what I'm doing and therefore (b) they won't get hurt. Then, and only then, am I able to make it look like I want to kill them. Just another of the paradoxes of the theatre.