The Great Montreal Theatre Escape DAYS 9 & 10

Daily blogs are a lot harder than I thought. I simply don't know what to say quickly enough.

So much has happened in the last 5 days, its impossible to encapsulate the experience succinctly. Whenever I write here, I try to condense my thoughts, keep it brisk and entertaining. But still, I get caught up and my long windedness takes over.

So how to tell you what made the last two days so profound? Is there a way to experience my feelings when even I don't have the words for them?

All I can give you are the following stories:

-After our first performance, where only 5 audience members attended, some members of the cast stayed behind and drank. By the the mid-way point of a huge bottle of Appleton rum, we were on the piano singing. My voice was raw from screaming in the play, but I sang an improvised ballad about skinning dogs. I don't' know how that started or why, but it was the first time in my life someone hearing me sing said, "wow I really like your voice." Energized by this sudden confidence, I spent a good part of Closing night jamming onstage with a variety of musicians. In front of three Quebecois teens, I did three improvised blues songs with an acoustic guitar and simple drum kit. The lone kid who wasn't involved sat and watched. Afterwards, he would turn to me and tell me it was amazing. I have never sang before. This experience, and I make no illusions of being any good, has in one fell swoop helped me get over my fear of singing. It's taken 29 years, but I think I'll see you at karaoke tonight. Seriously, this is a gift.

-During squeegee nights there is a part of the show where I kill a golf swinging yuppie. Cafy, the lead squeegee asks what we should do with the body:

Cafy: What should we do with his dead body?

Fernando: Conservation first. Waste not want not, my young squeegee friends. We're going to eat him. I spent two years with the Inuit and they believe in using the whole carcass. We'll start here with the buttocks and thigh, its where the most meat is.

At this point, I pull out a packet of prosciutto deli meat (hidden naturally) and proceed to mime cutting off chunks of person and feed the cast. My enemy, Glenn, a former hipster turned squeegee won't eat.

Glenn: Actually guys I can't. I'm a vegetarian actually.

Fernando: Oh come on Glenn!

Cafy: I'm a vegetarian too Glenn, but I eat fish....and human.

Fernando: And I'm a free-gen. You say you're a squeegee pretty boy, start eating like one!

I hand him some prosciutto and he partakes reluctantly. The final night, without telling the actor playing Glenn (Glyn Jones, a class act if ever there was), I replaced his prosciutto with an ACTUAL VEAL HEART. It was huge, bulbous, and only cost me a cool $5. It was disgusting. The whole cast knew I was going to play this practical joke, we were all excited to see what would happen. The script demands the he has to eat the meat.
Well it happened and I pulled out the heart on stage and the look on Glyn's face was PRICELESS. The heart split open in my hand, revealing the inside of it to the audience. The crowd was physically repulsed, I could feel and hear them shudder. Glyn, contemplating in his mind what was happening, took the heart and delivered his line:

Glenn: Free-gen it is!

He then (with great hesitation) rubbed his face in the heart, getting a delighted (and disgusted) squeal out of the audience. Against all my actors training, I broke out in laughter. I couldn't believe it. It was one of the funniest moments I have experienced on stage.


-Walking along the Montreal streets at God only knows what hour, down one of those picturesque streets with brick houses and spiral staircases, and realizing that all the snow on the streets was untouched, that as far as the eye could see was one solid blanket with no imperfections. Holding that moment and breathing in the frozen air.

-Waking up a bag of shit after a raucous night of partying and slinging my ass across a city I don't really know, to find a man at a piano waiting to teach me a song. Getting there and knowing that I could, without a fear of looking foolish.

-Standing in an empty theatre barefoot. Remembering the ghosts of things that had passed. Sitting across an empty stage; a blank canvas with unlimited possibilities. Yesterday held great moments on stage that lived and died and would never be seen again. Another will quickly take its place. And that setting up and tearing down, that constant cycle of human expression, the ritual of experiencing temporary things, that's what theatre is about.

-Being away from the people I love, and knowing that great love exists no matter where your feet land. Knowing that distance can't erase the permanent marker on our heart. Knowing that every day contains something worthwhile to experience. And above all, remembering that we are a part of creating that experience.

That's the best I can do. Obviously, I am inspired and a being a tad too romantic, have made it a big deal in my mind. I promise a lot of shit jokes in the next one. Perhaps a fake conversation with a fictional character. That should do the trick.

A poet-in-residence
That Blogging Bastard