Dec 6 2006, my husband Tom Leslie who teaches theatre part time at a local college was on his way to class. En route, he was listening to CBC Radio’s The Current.
CBC was broadcasting a 25 minute documentary on a show to be performed in Montreal that night – the 17th anniversary of one of the darkest days in Canadian history.
As Tom sat there, he heard a calm voice with a desperate need to be understood, a matter of fact voice that would not be silenced. Tom was immediately filled with a strange mix of revulsion and curiousity.
Who the hell was this?
As he listened, Tom soon discovered the voice was that of Montreal playwright / actor Adam Kelly performing from his one man show The Anorak. He was playing Marc Lépine, the reviled killer who had murdered 14 women at Montreal’s L’École Polytechnique 17 years ago.
Tom was dumbfounded and stayed in the car to get the all the information he could about this performance.
Thanks to Amy Barratt at The Montreal Mirror, Tom and I were able to contact Adam Kelly who said he was not ready to relinquish the rights, but that he would be happy to come and perform The Anorak for Poor Tom Productions
That was a year ago and sadly other similar incidents have occurred, Virginia Tech and most recently the campus shooting in Tuusula, Finland.
If you ask Adam why he performs The Anorak, he will tell you he is still trying to figure why these sort of events continue to happen. Like his audience, he does not know.
I truly believe that theatre is discourse.
Adam requests an audience forum after each performance. It is a way for him to ‘debrief’ from such a emotionally taxing role, but it is also a way to encourage crucially important public dialogue on why these events keep happening. Notes Kelly, it is not just about the play, it is about the issue itself.
