A theater piece about céline

[giglamoroso]

What do you think?

 

http://www.cjlo.com/events.php

[Bell]

Honestly, I think it`s stupid!

[JP]

I have my ticket to see it!

I adore Mado, and a friend of mine is in the piece..

And Mado say last thursday in a show that she had to learn 2 songs and one is 'Then you look at me'

 

In a certain point of view it can looks likes stupid but it's just a show..

 

http://mado.qc.ca/celine1.jpg

 

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Richard Burnett

 

http://hour.ca/_images/montreal/1534/texte/mado_cover_1534.jpg

 

It takes a drag queen to know a drag queen

photo: Cover photo by Harald Schrader

 

Who's the biggest diva of them all? Mado La Motte does Dion in Saving Céline

 

It was a moment made in drag queen heaven. Wrapping up this summer's tenth annual edition of Mascara: La Nuit des dragues at Divers/Cité, Montreal's Top 20 professional working drag queens took a final bow before 25,000 screaming fans.

 

Except the mistress of ceremonies, the ever-effervescent loudmouth Mado La Motte, the driving force behind Mascara, forgot to introduce Sheena Hershey.

 

Sheena - who'd slayed the crowd earlier that night with her Hi-NRG rendition of Tina Turner's Proud Mary - stood visibly fuming on stage, hands on her hips. She sashayed over to Mado, tapped La Motte on the back and, to the audience's delight, demanded her intro.

 

"That was Sheena the persona because we didn't have a problem backstage afterwards," Mado explains over brunch at Café Cherrier. "We're all chummy backstage even though in the drag queen world there are lots of egos and everyone wants to be number one."

 

The biggest ovation, though, was reserved for Mado. This was, after all, her tenth year at the helm of Mascara, the biggest drag show on the planet, the bastard child of Wigstock.

 

"What a fabulous show, darling!" famed Wigstock founder Lady Bunny told Mado backstage last year.

 

This summer, Montreal's mainstream media went nuts for Mascara's tenth anniversary. But they all neglected the real story: Mado La Motte, who got her professional start at Poodles (now Club Saphir) on the Main in 1987, is celebrating 20 years in showbiz.

 

And what a long, strange trip it's been.

 

It comes

full circle next week when La Motte - a.k.a. former UQÀM theatre student Luc Provost, who quit university two credits shy of a bachelor's degree - returns to the Main to star in, of all things, an English-language play at Montreal's pre-eminent indie theatre, Mainline Theatre, in the murder mystery Saving Céline.

 

"I must say I don't like English - it's a boring language," says Provost, who hilariously butchers the English language at Mascara, to the delight of anglophones and tourists. "It's not as colourful as French, Italian or Spanish. So I love to make fun of the language. But I'm getting more bilingual by the day since I'm working in English now and it feels really good to be back working on the Main."

 

The *CENSORED* is back

 

I have long thought of Mado and her entourage as akin to the rock band KISS circa 1979: She absolutely refuses to be photographed without makeup.

 

"I like being low-profile," explains Provost, who scoots around town on his cherry-red Vespa. "Especially in the sauna!"

 

Like Gene Simmons of KISS, Mado is a marketing genius: She got her start as a shooter *CENSORED* and cigarette girl at Poodles and Club Lézard. Mado has written a column for the monthly gay glossy Fugues for 18 years, wrote a weekly column for the Montreal alt-weekly Ici and compiled both columns for a bestselling Mado anthology; has appeared on countless TV programs and morning shows and was colour commentator for live French TV coverage of Divers/Cité's parade for several years; was a spokesmodel for a major potato chip company, remains Quebec's reigning Bingo Queen at the Montreal Casino, Just For Laughs Festival and at the Spectrum, which Mado sold out five times ("It's sad to see that venue close"); and five years ago she opened her own nightclub, the phenomenally successful Cabaret Mado in the Gay Village, where her statue doubles nicely as the nightclub's marquee and is something of a beacon in a neighbourhood now hailed as one of the planet's great gay meccas.

 

"When young children walk past my club they always point to Mado's statue," Provost says. "One time a child said, 'Look at the clown!" And his mother explained, 'No, that's a drag queen.' But children are the first to recognize what drag queens really are. We are clowns."

 

Mado's name recognition landed her the annual gig hosting the Montreal Fringe Festival Drag Race. That relationship has blossomed into Mado's new role in U.K.-based playwright Mark Watty's new play Saving Céline at Mainline Theatre, the indie venue run by equally ubiquitous Fringe producer Jeremy Hechtman.

 

But even in Montreal it's tough to make a living as a drag queen.

 

"To survive professionally in this city you really need three regular nights [per week] minimum, and that's a humble living," explains Provost. "If you do more than just performance, if you're also a shooter girl, then you also earn tips. There are really just two nightclubs where drag queens perform regularly, Cleo's [above the Cleopatra strip joint on the Main] and Cabaret Mado. I have five nights with about four performers each, so for Montreal's 20 professional drag queens, that works out for about five or six of them - like Madame Simone, Dream and Popeline. Most of the others work day jobs as well."

 

It's the same scenario in other big drag cities like New York and Sydney. "I'd estimate about a quarter of the drag queen population make a living performing drag," Luc says.

 

Drag queens work hard to delay their inevitable expiry date.

 

"If you don't renew your act, if you keep repeating the same 10 or 20 numbers, you're going to get old pretty quickly. Nightclub owners and audiences will say, 'Enough is enough.' But a few of us in Montreal - myself, Nana, Michel Dorion, Gerry Cyr - we're still at the top. But like the baby boomers, until we step aside, the young drag queens can't move up. I still love my job, so at my age I can't go out and get wasted like I did [years ago working] at Lézard and KOX. And I work out because I want to fit into my costumes."

 

Lights! Camera! Action!

 

Over the years Mado has gotten so many movie and television role offers that never materialized that she took a wait-and-see approach when playwright Mark Watty told her he was writing a play with Mado in mind.

 

"People have always wanted to profit on Mado's name," Provost says.

 

But the Vancouver-born Watty - who has worked on U.K. and North American productions of, among others, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, The King and I, Fame, West Side Story and Blast! (both on Broadway and in the West End), and who has also served as music theatre director for the Covent Garden Festival under the patronage of the late Diana, Princess of Wales - knows a thing or two about divas.

 

Watty tackles that subject, as well as the cult of celebrity, in the comic thriller Saving Céline, which stars Mado (as opposed to Luc Provost) as a Céline Dion impersonator who uncovers a sinister murder conspiracy. Mado leads a cast of six actors playing 25 roles.

 

Says Watty, "In the age of YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, if everyone can have Andy Warhol's 15 minutes, then what really matters? Mado's character Céline doesn't emulate Céline Dion because she wants her acclaim, but rather everything else that she thinks comes with the package - acceptance, security and a sense of purpose."

 

Provost, like most Montrealers, thinks Céline Dion is as trashy as her music. "I don't care for Céline, I'm not a fan," he says. "But my character in the play thinks she is Céline."

 

As for the diva behaviour of drag queens and the female superstars they emulate, Provost rolls his eyeballs.

 

"I have never been a diva," says Luc, who is thinking of building on Saving Céline's success by touring Mado in English around the world. "I've never demanded perks, even when I've performed outside Montreal, in Paris or wherever. I'm not here to party. I'm here to give a performance. Like I tell all my drag queens, we can't take ourselves too seriously. We are clowns. We are not our personas. I am not Mado."

 

Saving Céline

At Mainline Theatre (3997 St-Laurent)

Aug. 29 to Sept. 15, Wed. to Sat., 8 p.m.

Tickets: $20 adults, $10 students on Wed. and Thurs.

To purchase tickets: www.cshow.ca or 514-848-9696

Edited August 25, 2007 at 07:41 AM by JP

[sebyitaly]

:eek: :eek:

[Marchino]

I find it funny!

[Immensité]

I don't see the humour in it...

[ByuSmurf]

Sounds like good campy fun to me!!

 

I love drag shows!!

[Shaun]

LMAO. Hilarious.

[JP]

Sounds like good campy fun to me!!

 

I love drag shows!!

It's a little bit more like a theatre piece than a dragshow because the only drag is Mado, all the others comedians are normal persons

I will do a review after i comeback from the show

[lauracd]

I think it's a funny and strange idea!

[celine_rox]

WTF

[celinerific]

Well there's something you don't see everyday.

[A New Day Has Come]

Okay that is just plain creepy to me honestly. I think it is quit odd and you defiantly don't see that every day Like Celinerific said I mean it is quit creepy to me.

[Love,]

Is this supposed to be an homage? :mdr:

 

I don't know what to say until I see or get more details on the production itself. I wonder if Celine and Rene knows about this since its so local (Montreal) to them...

[nano]

omg.

[Lulu]

Here is an interview with Mado on CBC:

 

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20070827_3163.mp3