The Belfry Theatre is putting on the 10th annual SPARK Festival this month with productions by notable Canadian playwrights, directors, comedians, musicians, and performers.
Comedian and writer Mike Delamont will perform his one-man production of Mama’s Boy at the fest; the play is his story of growing up with and saying goodbye to an alcoholic parent. Delamont’s mother was a lifelong alcoholic who died in 2012 without ever achieving sobriety.
“She was a binge drinker, so she’d be totally fine for months and months and months and then all of a sudden just kind of disappear off the face of the earth, you know, and be gone for a week,” says Delamont, adding that “she was an excellent mom, she was wonderful, and she provided for me and she introduced me to theatre.”
But her alcoholism grew more severe as the years passed; Delamont remembers a Jekyll-and-Hyde kind of transformation between binges.
“Being the child of an alcoholic, you do feel very alone in that,” he says. “You don’t feel that anybody else is going through that experience, and as you become an adult, you’re like, ‘Oh, a lot of people had that same experience.’”
Delamont workshopped Mama’s Boy here in Victoria and has performed it in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Orlando, Florida. It’s an emotional show; the degree to which the work resonates with his audience was unexpected, says Delamont.
“It’s fascinating to talk to people after the show,” he says. “Either they had alcoholic parents, or they are an alcoholic parent, or they lost a parent that they were very close to. It’s interesting because I never wrote it to be a universally accepted show; I just wanted to write my own story.”
The show is built from a series of anecdotes and songs about Delamont’s childhood with his mother and his dad, all presented in chapters that swing unexpectedly between wildly comedic and heart-wrenching.
“It’s a very heavy script told in a very conversational, easy dialogue from the mind of a comedian,” says Delamont, “so even in the darkest points there is a lot of funny in it, which is what I really enjoy the most about it.”
Sound of the Beast, written and performed by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, veers away from the private tragedy of addiction and into the very public and political realms of resistance.
“I think that there’s a heightened sensitivity caused by Black Lives Matter and Me Too,” says St. Bernard. “I think part of the moment that we’re in is learning not to take authority at face value. I think it’s a critical thinking moment.”
Written over 2015 and 2016 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s spoken-word program, Sound of the Beast is told through hip hop, spoken word, and theatre, an approach St. Bernard describes as “trying to bring my fullest self to this story.” St. Bernard is one-quarter of the way through 54ology, a project for which she is writing a performance story for and about each of Africa’s 54 countries. Sound of the Beast, in part, tells the story of Tunisian rapper Weld El 15, who spent two years in prison for his song “Boulicia Kleb” (which roughly translates to “Cops Are Dogs”). St. Bernard, who lives and works in Toronto, says that her story also looks at other ways racism can manifest on a daily basis.
“Part of the story I’m telling involves the casual scrutiny of carding, like being stopped and asked who you are all the time in your own neighbourhood,” she says.
St. Bernard says that she’s also had encounters with the police.
“Yeah, I’m sort of the person that some people might say was asking for it,” she says. “Like, I’m certainly not trying to stay out of their way.”
She acknowledges that there’s privilege in being able to both craft and perform her work for audiences across Canada. Sharing her story with communities outside of Toronto, she’s felt a little apprehensive but also pleased at the positive reception.
“I think it’s part of our safety right, like when I say I’m afraid of these people and I don’t ever want to be in a room with them where someone didn’t know I’m in a room with them, like, I don’t know what happens in the dark,” she says. “I feel like the louder I can say it, the more I sort of feel that someone would notice if I disappeared.”
St. Bernard says having to travel across the country telling an elaborate story, complete with lighting and sound design, just in order to be believed about the reality of police action against Canadians is frustrating.
“[People often have] a reflexive attitude, ‘Oh, there’s always something with these people, they’re always mad about something,’ or, ‘They just hate cops; it’s just a thing they do.’ There’s a weird tension,” she says, “of wanting your rights, wanting access to all the services that a civilized city offers, but knowing that you’re in some ways not really part of that and not really considered entitled to those things.”
SPARK Festival
Various times, Friday, March 8 to Sunday, March 24
$25.65 student tickets, Belfry Theatre
sparkfestival.ca