Adam Kelly - Dancing Cock Brother
Montreal Actor on His Zany Comedy Quartet and His Love for the Bard
The Anorak has once again been nominated for the Montreal English Critics Circle Awards (MECCAS), this time as Best New Text and Best Production. That's no surprise to many, except of course to author Adam Kelly himself, who admitted he "had no idea".
Adam Kelly is the first to say there is another side to Adam Kelly. He loves comedy, the nastier and zanier the better. So once upon a time he decided to form a little comedy troupe called The Dancing Cock Brothers. Mind out of the gutter! It's "like the male chicken, you know."
The self-described "dangerous, vulgar, booze-soaked, theatrical sketch comedy troupe", or DCBs, have been causing regular havoc in Montreal, and recently they debuted in Toronto. That's funny, because you would think after their musical stint in Let's All Hate Toronto that Mr. Toronto would not let them pass! This year they did get in. But it was no picnic, as they had tried to get into the Toronto Comedy Sketch Fest two years before. This interview was carried out before DCB debuted in TO.
So The Toronto Sketch Fest is going to be a big deal?
"We have been doing the Montreal Comedy Sketch Comedy Festival for the past two years. Two years ago was the inaugural year at Theatre Ste. Catherine, which is a little indie theatre in Montreal. We actually applied to get into the Toronto Sketch Festival two years ago, but we were not accepted. We were a bit cross about that, because when we looked at the list of the people who were accepted, it was like one troupe from everything East of Toronto, one troupe from everything West of Toronto, one troupe from Montreal, about ten troupes from the States and 20 troupes from Toronto. So that was annoying.
But whatever… we are The Dancing Cock Brothers and we can understand that we wouldn’t be interesting to people from Toronto because we are nasty and all that… and Torontonians are very polite. But then the folks from The Toronto Sketch Fest were at The Montreal Sketch Fest last year. It’s possible that we didn’t send them a very good application package also."
You remind me of a cross between Kids in the Hall and Beyond The Fringe.
"I wouldn’t know how to classify us. I think we really are different from all that other stuff that I’ve seen before. We have all those influences… I would throw (Monty) Python in there for sure and The Frantics, Saturday Night Live. We are influenced by all that stuff, but different. The folks from theToronto Sketch Fest were here last year and said "Oh so this is what you guys do. Okay... apply next year please." We said "Okay, we are game. We’ll apply again, and we got in." I think they also had a mandate to be a little more expansive in their choices. There were four or five troupes from Montreal this year and a bunch more from across Canada. So I think the Sketch Fest is getting quite big."
Who is your favourite playwright?
"I‘ve got some answers. What do you think of answers like Shakespeare?"
Everyone says that. But that’s all right. Let’s face it. He’s great.
"I know it is so straightforward, but I really do like Shakespeare."
Why? Why do you like Shakespeare?
"I like playwrights who ask a lot of questions. That’s the kinds of plays I like to read. That’s the kind of literature I like to read. I find with plays like Hamlet and King Lear people are always asking ‘What is this all about? What is going on here?’ Even in his romances, everyone goes 'Okay, I love Romeo and Juliet because it is so romantic, but what is the deal with Mercutio?’ Why is he such a fascinating character? I think there is a lot of that in Shakespeare’s stuff. It’s beautiful. You can approach it from that kind of scholarly view as much as you want. It’s well written. I’ve approached Shakespeare from the poetry point of view. It is all wonderful. What I really like is the fact there are so many questions asked in Shakespeare and so many possibilities and it is always about a difficult issue."
"With Hamlet, there’s the questions of what do you do when you are confronted with something evil and the ghost of your father is telling you that your uncle has done something evil and your mother has done something evil. Everything around you is evil but you are trying to stay above it all and how do you act given that situation. That’s tough."
"With Lear, it’s what do you do when you raise your children to have everything and yet they don’t respond well to what you think is good parenting, and how they react. Is it acceptable? Is it not? It’s difficult. You find that different people have different answers for different sides of the question being raised depending on who you talk to and I think that’s a good sign."
"This is why I prefer (August) Strindberg to (Henrik) Ibsen. Strindberg is… okay. People likely think oh, he’s doing a play about Marc Lepine and he likes Strindberg, oh well.. there is an obvious connection. To me, I think with Strindberg there’s a lot more questioning going on. Whereas with Ibsen it’s always pretty much 'Okay. men are bad, women deserve more rights'. That’s fine but it is a given. You know Strindberg has people walking out of closets thinking they are parrots. What’s that all about? And it is a very strange sort of humour as well."
The Dancing Cock Brothers present A Very Cocky Christmas Wed Dec 19 at Montreal's Mainline Theatre
