Donna-Michelle St. Bernard will perform Sound of the Beast at SPARK (photo by Graham Isador).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nBut her alcoholism grew more severe as the years passed; Delamont remembers a Jekyll-and-Hyde kind of transformation between binges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBeing the child of an alcoholic, you do feel very alone in that,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t feel that anybody else is going through that experience, and as you become an adult, you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, a lot of people had that same experience.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Delamont workshopped Mama\u2019s Boy<\/em> here in Victoria and has performed it in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Orlando, Florida. It\u2019s an emotional show; the degree to which the work resonates with his audience was unexpected, says Delamont. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s fascinating to talk to people after the show,\u201d he says. \u201cEither they had alcoholic parents, or they are an alcoholic parent, or they lost a parent that they were very close to. It\u2019s interesting because I never wrote it to be a universally accepted show; I just wanted to write my own story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The show is built from a series of anecdotes and songs about Delamont\u2019s childhood with his mother and his dad, all presented in chapters that swing unexpectedly between wildly comedic and heart-wrenching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very heavy script told in a very conversational, easy dialogue from the mind of a comedian,\u201d says Delamont, \u201cso even in the darkest points there is a lot of funny in it, which is what I really enjoy the most about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sound of the Beast<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI think that there\u2019s a heightened sensitivity caused by Black Lives Matter and Me Too,\u201d says St. Bernard. \u201cI think part of the moment that we\u2019re in is learning not to take authority at face value. I think it\u2019s a critical thinking moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Written over 2015 and 2016 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity\u2019s spoken-word program, Sound of the Beast<\/em> is told through hip hop, spoken word, and theatre, an approach St. Bernard describes as \u201ctrying to bring my fullest self to this story.\u201d St. Bernard is one-quarter of the way through 54ology<\/em>, a project for which she is writing a performance story for and about each of Africa\u2019s 54 countries. Sound of the Beast<\/em>, in part, tells the story of Tunisian rapper Weld El 15, who spent two years in prison for his song \u201cBoulicia Kleb\u201d (which roughly translates to \u201cCops Are Dogs\u201d). St. Bernard, who lives and works in Toronto, says that her story also looks at other ways racism can manifest on a daily basis.
\n\u201cPart of the story I\u2019m telling involves the casual scrutiny of carding, like being stopped and asked who you are all the time in your own neighbourhood,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSt. Bernard says that she\u2019s also had encounters with the police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m sort of the person that some people might say was asking for it,\u201d she says. \u201cLike, I\u2019m certainly not trying to stay out of their way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She acknowledges that there\u2019s privilege in being able to both craft and perform her work for audiences across Canada. Sharing her story with communities outside of Toronto, she\u2019s felt a little apprehensive but also pleased at the positive reception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s part of our safety right, like when I say I\u2019m afraid of these people and I don\u2019t ever want to be in a room with them where someone didn\u2019t know I\u2019m in a room with them, like, I don\u2019t know what happens in the dark,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like the louder I can say it, the more I sort of feel that someone would notice if I disappeared.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[People often have] a reflexive attitude, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s always something with these people, they\u2019re always mad about something,\u2019 or, \u2018They just hate cops; it\u2019s just a thing they do.\u2019 There\u2019s a weird tension,\u201d she says, \u201cof wanting your rights, wanting access to all the services that a civilized city offers, but knowing that you\u2019re in some ways not really part of that and not really considered entitled to those things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SPARK Festival
Various times, Friday, March 8 to Sunday, March 24
$25.65 student tickets, Belfry Theatre
sparkfestival.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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\u2019s Boy at the fest; the play is his story of growing up with and saying goodbye to an alcoholic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-6-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17316,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314\/revisions\/17316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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