By Leilani Graham-Laidlaw, Arts Contributor
So you’ve almost got lucky – that person you locked eyes with in class is letting you take them out. Forget taking them to the latest movie. Ryan Doucette’s one-man show about firsts would be the perfect thing to see on a first date. Doucette would use up all the awkward moments and, if your crush has any sense of humour or humanity, leave the pair of you with lots to talk about at the bar afterwards.
“It’s a clown show, with themes. Which is kind of unheard of, I guess… it’s a very weird looking show thing” says Doucette. “But it’s a very funny show thing too, about this weird ay-yi-yi feeling here.”
First dates, first times on stage, first break-ups (using a post as a girlfriend – she’s got a lovely voice-over), and even the multiple first entrances Doucette makes are all treated with charm and an awkward kind of humour. “There’s that whole concept of just having this door and me coming in… How you do these first things without freaking out, without pushing too much or not enough,” he says. “That’s the whole concept of this thing – it’s just a clown show, I don’t even know how to describe it.”
At about 45 minutes, it’s not a long play, but Doucette says it’s what he needs to and gets all the laughs in. Doucette is an active performer. It’s just him and a narrator backed up by music, lighting and a sparse yet bold set. He never talks or moves at the same speed for more than two seconds before he’s on to the next idea. It’s exactly like watching someone’s thoughts. “It’s a very weird place,” he says. “You just have to be very open and sensitive and I guess you get that from years and years of being in awkward and vulnerable places. I attract mishaps – bad things happen to me all the time, people spill shit on me all the time. It kind of makes you to be that person.”
“It’s not like a clown show with floppy shoes, wakka-wakka, squirting things… I’m playing me onstage, which is a weird thing I guess. I’m not me in my living room, in my underpants.”
He created the show with John Beale, and the two of them have “been teaching clown for a while – I’ve been taking his classes and then teaching and we’ve been helping each other out. It’s been a four year process, trying to take what we’ve done in the classroom and put it in a show.” Showing that vulnerability which is clown is challenging, he says, and the show changes all the time to reflect that. “Being vulnerable is hard. It’s hard to just kind of be yourself and not force too much and sometimes I do it in the show, I catch myself and oh, too much, or that wasn’t enough. We’re still working on it. Come to the show. It changes every time.”
One change that Doucette claims as no big deal was a French version of the show that ran for two nights last week. He is Acadian, and he never thought that translating it was a big deal. “That’s the beauty of the show, no matter what language it’s so universal – the first thing is a universal thing, everybody struggles with these moments of sheer panic.”
Doucette has no idea what is next for him. “I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow let alone after this,” he says. “I just got an apartment, so I’m probably going to stay for a couple months… it’s fun coming home here.”
Should I Be Doing This? runs until October 2, Wednesdays to Sundays at 8 p.m., at the Plutonium Playhouse, 2315 Hunter Street. And yes, you should be doing this.
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