Lee-Anne Poole began writing stageplay Splinters when she was just a teenager, and her struggles with her own sexuality and coming out to her mother informed the work.
"I finished this 10 years ago, and a lot of the inspiration came from myself and my family. As I was playing out scenes, I told my mother, and it was a weird thing," said Poole.
"She's old school, and I had to use language she understood, so I said I was a lesbian. That was how she would understand."
But as Poole -- and the new film adaptation from Thom Fitzgerald -- display, 'gay' wasn't the most accurate descriptor.
This is a love-letter to our complex relationship. It's a portrayal of the most charming homophobe I know
"The thought of explaining the nuances of being 'queer' seemed so difficult to do with her. Things were slow and steady over any years. Before I finished writing, I began dating a cis man," she said.
"I had to come out again -- as straight --and after she was heartbroken over me being gay, she suddenly had this happiness now that I was with a man. It cheapened those queer relationships before that she didn't want to hear about."
She says in the play, her mother's character was well-loved by audiences.
"This is a love-letter to our complex relationship. It's a portrayal of the most charming homophobe I know," she said.
"She came it it with love, and her definition of love is between a man and woman. The idea of being gay didn't compute for her."
Poole says 15 years ago, she didn't really have the terminology to define herself, and even now, she couldn't define it.
"To be queer, for me, is constantly evolving and is often a reactionary thing," she said. "In a lot of ways, we were both at fault. I was busy trying to protect her, and I utterly failed. I tried to spare her feelings, and failed."
But she recognizes that her mother's inability to accept things foreign or new to her makes her own failures apparent.
"The premise of the play is about a young woman coming home when her dad passes. Her mom doesn't know she's with a man, and she tells her boyfriend not to come, but he does anyway," she said.
"There's this complex emotional relief the other feels when she finds out, and this is a play about a young woman, who came out as gay, who is terrified to come out as heterosexual."
She's excited for Thom Fitzgerald, a mentor and formidable director in town, to show his vision on the big screen.
"We met and ran the Plutonium Playhouse above Long & McQuade for two years. We presented Thom's Cloudburst in play form, and then he made it into a movie," she said.
"We also did Splinters, which ran for five weeks. Then Thom purchased the rights for a film adaptation. I was 23, and I thought a movie would never really get made. I just assumed he was finding a creative way to give me money."
She is excited to see what Fitzgerald has done with the work.
"There are things when I was writing this that I didn't understand yet, and I'm thrilled to have a proliffic, skilled writer like Thom adapt this. He will bring so much talent to it," she said.
She said this story is both complicated and interestingly uncomplicated
"This is an important time to tell queer stories. But when you get to the bare bones, this is how a parent and child relate to and accept each other. It's universal in that way," she said.
"It's amazing this this movie will follow a queer woman in a heterosexual relationship, but since Plutonium, two theatre companies have wanted to wait to put on productions of Splinters because it may be too risque. It's ironic for sure."
It will open the FIN annual Halifax film fesival here at the Rebecca Cohn Theatre at 7 p.m. on September 13. Seats are limited and can be purchased here.
"I'm excited to see this wwith a large audience, and it will be an emotional time. I'm so grateful it will be seen at FIN," she said.
