WRITER-ACTOR TONYA YORKE'S FILM LISTEN ACCEPTED AT STIFF 2012 >>>
With already two films to its credit this year, Tonya Yorke's In the Room Productions quickly moves into the spotlight. While the Tacoma actor-producer's effort in The Shootout, a western about gunslinger Jesse James, nears completion for the festival circuit, last week Yorke received good news about another project: The Seattle True Independent Film Festival (STIFF) has accepted her short, Listen, into its upcoming May lineup.
The honor hasn't entirely sunk in for this first-time screenwriter. "I'm just kind of not grasping ... that these things are happening," she laughs.
Motivated by an unshaken faith that her life's path lies in filmmaking, Yorke knows how to turn dreams into the real thing - literally. She based her script for Listen on what she calls "a very haunting dream" of a long-lost coworker from her youth. Yorke never had a chance to share her vision with that boy, and so it always stayed with her.
"(Originally) I wrote the story as a monologue that I used in auditions for years," she says.
In Listen Yorke revisits her past once more by playing Allison, a grocery store clerk unsure whether to tell a stocker she barely knows about her strange dream. Actor Ernie Joseph, who shares the screen with Yorke in The Shootout, does so again as the depressed character Paul. The result is a beautifully shot, sincere film about trusting one's intuition and listening for the unspoken pain in others.
As Yorke says, "You never know what's going on in someone's life."
Visit STIFF's website soon to find Listen's screening date, or check for updates on Listen's Facebook page.
LINK: A behind-the-scenes featurette on Listen
Listen to Listen's Tonya Yorke discuss her personal film with me in the video below.