The Anorak
Montreal Playwright Adam Kelly on Life and Death of Marc Lépine
On December 6, 1989, student life changed forever when college student Marc Lépine gunned down 14 women at the University of Montreal.
The shockwave of these horrific events was felt worldwide and the shooting at Montreal’s École Polytechnique is now known as The Montreal Massacre – one of the blackest days in Canadian history.
Montreal playwright / actor Adam Kelly has written a one-man show about the life and the death of Marc Lépine called The Anorak. In addition to winning numerous awards The Anorak, which always has an audience forum after the show, has opened a crucial dialogue about this tragedy and others like it that continue to occur with alarming frequency in today’s society.
anorak/ n. 1 a waterproof jacket of cloth or plastic, usu. with a hood, of a kind originally used in polar regions. 2 colloq. derog. a boring, studious, or socially inept person with unfashionable and solitary interests.[Greenland Eskimo anoraq]
Adam Kelly has been researching the events at L’École Polytechnique for some time. He didn't know about the recent campus shooting in Tuusula, Finland until he was being interviewed. Indeed it came as disturbing news, but not entirely.
"Given what my play is all about – the Polytechnique massacre – it just so happens that I am aware of the statistics that Quebec ranks third in the world for suicides for men under the age of 40. We are third to Japan and Finland."
What sparked the idea for The Anorak?
“I was doing an MFA in acting at York University in Toronto and we had to write a solo show that was personal to us. I ended up writing a piece based on the things that I have gone through in my life, but it was all revolving around the Polytechnique massacre. I don’t really know why.
Ultimately, I guess it just had an impact on me. I was 16 and I was studying at CÉGEP. When you finish high school here in Quebec, you go to CÉGEP before you go to university. As I have learned more about Marc Lépine and his experience growing up, I discovered that he grew up in the same town as me. He changed his name, took his mother’s name, which I did as well. I just found a lot of things that I could identify with, so I guess that is part of the reason, but even before I had all that information, I was already writing this play, at least the origins of it – but why – I don’t know really. It is just something that’s affected me a lot and I wanted to explore it through writing and acting.”
You were taking a writing course with playwright Colleen Murphy (The December Man) and she encouraged you to develop The Anorak.
Yes, and her play The Piper that was being workshopped at York eventually went to The Factory Theatre Mainspace (directed by Richard Rose), and I was part of that production too.
And now Colleen Murphy has written The December Man, which debuted at Alberta Theatre Projects in the EnBridge PlayRites Festival and is coming to CanStage – the other side of this tragic event.
"Yeah, exactly. I want to talk to her about that. I wonder if she had the idea to write that before she read my play or afterwards."
I know you have done a lot of research on this. How long have you been working on The Anorak?
"The first writings that I did back when I was doing my MFA would have been 2000, so technically seven years. But I only started doing research and writing the play as it is now for the past five years."
This is a one-man show, which is very difficult anyway, the whole concept of monodrama. Has the character evolved? Does he change from show to show?
"Yes. He changes from show to show for sure and because I’ve written it I feel I have liberties that you don’t have with a solid text. If anyone is going to do this play, I want them to follow what I have written pretty much. But I give myself liberties within a show and it doesn’t always work out, but I think a lot of the times it does. I will just come up with something on the spot, something that I think of and I can speak that , and that’s a little evolution when it happens but the character and the play have evolved quite a bit."
Adam Kelly performs The Anorak at Oakham House, Ryerson University Toronto, for International Women's Day March 6,7,8
Part Two - Adam Kelly talks about Monique Lépine and how her actions after the 2006 Dawson College shootings influenced him to add another scene to The Anorak.
