index.htm

Time to Put My Socks On
July 8-10, 2010
Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre Sudio
1233 WELLINGTON ST. (at Holland), Ottawa ON
facebook Join our facebook group!

Edgy comedy tackles disability, love and socks!

Alan Shain in Time to Put My Socks OnVeteran disabled actor/comedian Alan Shain hits Ottawa with his new, intimate and sometimes gritty solo show Time to Put My Socks On at the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre Studio, July 8-10. Show times are at 8pm. Tickets are $15/13 students/seniors/artists/unwaged; $12 Saturday matinee at 3pm and a July 7 preview PWYC at 8pm.

Co-created with Michele Decottignes, Artistic Director of Stage Left Productions, Time To Put My Socks On follows Marc - a 30-something year old guy with cerebral palsy who is about to celebrate his first anniversary with Linda, his nondisabled partner. Marc is bursting with excitement. He loves Linda! Linda loves him! She is poised to move in ... Marc is plagued with doubts.

Linda has a sock fetish. The more elaborate and colourful the sock the better! But Marc swears by white tube socks. They are quick and easy to put on. Can the love between Marc and Linda survive their war over socks?

"On one level, this show is about how relationships are often tested by the most trivial of little things – over and over and over again," says Shain, "But on another level, this show is about how big these apparently trivial things can be – especially when a person has been struggling to live up to what it means to be a man in this society."

Marc is full of contradictions. He has issues around how well he measures up to ideals of power and control. But he is proud of his cerebral palsied body, exclaiming "Dancing is my thing. Dancing is when my body breaks free and I do whatever I want. I move in my own way, according to my own time, and people can either dance with me or go to hell!"
Marc revels in the great connection he has with Linda, both on the dance floor and between the sheets. But he claims she'll take over his life should their relationship get any closer. According to Marc, "Married people know each other's thoughts, needs, and feelings before they even speak. That scares the s*** out of me!"

"Marc is a product of what we value in men," says Michele Decottignes, co-writer and director of the show. "These values often contradict each other. And in the end, Marc's issues have almost nothing to do with his actual relationship with Linda. Rather, they have everything to do with how we perceive his relationship with Linda."

"Linda is the woman of Marc's dreams," says Shain. "But because of our views around masculinity, power and control, he worries Linda will be seen simply as his caretaker and not his partner in life. And Marc definitely does not want Linda to control which socks he will wear – when and how – forever after and a day!"

Alan Shain in Time to Put My Socks OnBoth Michele Decottignes and Alan Shain are radical disabled activists using the performing arts to affect equality. Time to Put My Socks On represents a unique three year collaboration which has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa. The development of this show was also supported by disabled artist/activist, Rachel Gorman, who provided movement direction and character decorum considerations, and by nondisabled artist Nicole Dunbar, Stage Left Production's former Associate Artistic Director. Dunbar provided dramaturgical, directing, and acting support, and who plays Linda in the voice overs and video montages.

This dramaturgical team comprises some of Canada's leaders within the global Disability Arts and Cultural Movement – a radical movement of disabled artists who are breaking and re-making conventions in performance to present their lived experience as complex, dynamic, and infused with hopes and dreams, self-worth, autonomy and sexuality and relationships. Like all of us, their lives are affected by social attitudes and barriers.
Shain, Artistic Director of Smashing Stereotypes Productions, is an Ottawa-based multi-disciplinary artist working in performance creation, solo-performance, dance, storytelling, and stand-up comedy. Shain has played to more than 1000 audiences around the world – including Australia, the UK, Taiwan, Bermuda, Canada, and the USA. He holds the honor of being the only Canadian artist presented at the 2000 Paralympic Arts Festival in Sydney, Australia. He has toured with Yuk Yuk's Komedy Klub, appeared at the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, and has been featured on Moving On, a national CBC TV program. His stand-up act is a hilarious rebuff at public attitudes to disability, where he attempts to answer burning questions such as "Do wheelchair-people ever go to the bathroom?", "Are all wheelchair-people related to each other?", and "Do they ever think about sex?" ("Oh yes!" says Alan, with a big smile!)

Michele Decottignies is an award-winning Calgary-based playwright, producer, presenter, and director. She is also one of Calgary's most accomplished Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) facilitators, having taking master training in Canada and the U.S. and used TO techniques in her arts-based community development and social justice practice, and in professional interdisciplinary artist-community collaboration, for over a decade now. Over the past three years, Michele has received over $200,000 from national and provincial arts funders to continue her professional artist-community collaboration, and has received many awards/ honors for her work with diverse communities.

She was awarded the Moondance Columbine Playwrighting Award for the advancement of non-violent resolutions to conflict in Mercy Killing or Murder: The Tracy Latimer Story as well as being named by Alberta Playwrights' Network at one of Alberta's Top 100. Michele was also recently awarded with a Calgary Award for community achievement in the arts. In 2005, she received the Alliance Atlantis Award of Distinction, given to the person in Canada who has made the most outstanding contribution to the disability arts and culture movement. Michele was also the 2005 recipient of the Calgary Professional Arts Alliance's Enbridge Emerging Artist Award and the 2005 U of C Fine Arts Creative Achievement Award in Drama.

For full information, interviews, photos, contact:
Alan Shain, alanshain@yahoo.ca, 613-234-5742 (home) 613-715-3150 (cell)
Patrick Holloway, patrick.holloway@sympatico.ca

 

Time To Put My Socks On picks up where Still Waiting For That Special Bus left off. A year ago Marc impressed Linda, dragging his walker and himself up two flights of stairs to dance with her on their first date. But now, on their first anniversary, Linda wants to talk about love, sex, passion... and where to put the couch! But, is Marc willing to drag himself up stairs forever – even for the woman he loves??!

Developed by Alan Shain, Michele Decottignies, Nicole Dunbar, and Rachel Gorman, this original solo-performance offers a comical exploration of a disabled man’s issues with power, control, and independence as he contemplates a future with his able-bodied partner and potential wife!

“I can't stop thinking about this show. It really blew me away and made me re-think so many of my assumptions about people. Anyone who sees this show will be a better person for it!”

- Montreal Fringe Festival Net Buzz

Time To Put My Socks On is a witty exploration of how disability is perceived in our society, and the implications of this perception for sexuality, independence, social connections, and the everyday hurdles that disabled people have to overcome to do things most of us take for granted.”

- Toronto Fringe Festival Blog Review

 

 


 

shain

holds

the stage

with

consummate

ease

 

robert crew

TORONTO STAR